PKMN2K10
by Mr. Dynasty
Summary: After a crushing defeat, Ash returns home to rediscover his ambitions as a trainer. Friends and foes both new and old surround him on all sides, but can he find the way to forge ahead and emerge victorious, even as the world grows darker and ever more sinister around him? Language/Violence
1. Chapter I

******Disclaimer:** I do not own Pokémon.

This story contains foul language, drugs and alcohol, violence, sexual situations, and crude humor. This fic contains a large cast; both canon characters and OCs. Also, I am not accepting plot or character submissions. I update whenever I can manage to, which is rarely. I am a piss-poor editor, and I don't really need anyone to tell me so but reviews, both positive and negative, are welcome.

**Chapter Summary: **What became of the would-be champion, Ash Ketchum? Misty and the Pallet Town Search and Rescue Coalition still don't have an answer even after three months of rabid searching. After an all-day runaround, she finds herself spending the night at a rest-stop near Ilex Forest.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter I**

"Keep My Heart Alive"

"A task such as that, carves us into what we must become, to see it through. You must be ready for the journey to cut away what is no longer required."

"There's nothing left to take away, honestly." Misty shrugged. "I don't have anything left that anyone can take from me."

"I can easily see this journey has taken a lot out of you," The old man acknowledged, nodding his head slightly. Misty did not respond in kind; only lowered her shoulders and tried her best to look unphased. She did not like to think that she looked tired or worn out, for the simple fact that deep down, much like her sisters, she did have a certain pride in her appearance. Also, she did not care too much for the implications, seeing as how since the departure of the remainder of her search-party had left her a lone investigator in Ash's disappearance, she preferred to keep her recollection of events on a day-by-day basis. She found it easier to take the unknown day ahead without the context of a hundred fruitless ones before it.

"Perhaps you should offer up prayer to Arceus," The man suggested, lifting a hand from his knee and offering it up conjecturally.

"Would it help?" Misty asked, trying not to sound overly cynical. She wasn't the religious sort, though she did find a certain beauty in it; it just didn't seem very practical. She did not want to seem rude, however.

"Would it hurt?" The man countered very gently, taking no offense it seemed. "You've already decided to stay until sunrise, correct? If so, then it's no time lost. Just stop at the shrine at Ilex on your way, and offer up a small prayer for him."

She shook her head. "I don't really know how. I've never done it before."

"It doesn't matter." The man shook his head this time. "If you speak from your heart, Arceus will hear you."

Misty pulled her lips together resolutely. "If you think it will help."

He only shrugged, however. "I can't say one way or another." He swiveled to a three-point stance from his seated position. "But it cannot hurt."

He gestured to the sleeping pallet on the floor at the far end of the room, before folding up the sleeves of his long, traditional garb, and tucking off a quick bow. "Many trainers from New Bark stop here to stay the night, when the weather is bad, so we are always prepared to accommodate a guest or two. Please have a restful night's sleep. I wish you luck on your journey."

Misty nodded and said nothing, rolling her backpack off her shoulder as the old man crept away. She dug around for her Pokegear, and flipped it open. There were seven unread text-messages.

_Brock 7:15- Nothing today. Sorry guys.  
Gary 7:46- No leads.  
May 8:11- nothing srry T_T  
Mrs. K 8:30 FWD: no word from silver yet but lets keep doing our best everyone!  
Paul 8:35 – Followed a lead in the Sevii islands that turned out to be someone who'd seen Richie. AGAIN. Huge waste of time for that idiot to be searching too!  
Dawn 9:10 – hey  
Dawn 9:15 – hey what ru doin right now?_

She looked at the digital clock. It was 9:45. She rotated the 'gear in her hands and flipped it open, tapping out a check-in, as was routine, before sending Dawn a reply.

_New message: All Contacts  
Still nothing._

_Reply: Dawn  
I'm near Ilex, getting ready to call it a day. Still up?_

She gathered her backpack and made her way over to the bedroll, before setting it down and digging out her nightclothes. She had only managed to stomp the heel of one sneaker off before she felt the silent ringer go off in her hand. She flipped the device open again.

_Dawn 9:49 - yep. just wondering if u were okay. u usually check nb4 now._

She worked her thumbs briefly as she smashed the other shoe off with the tips of her toes.

_Reply: Dawn_

_I'm ok. I just got caught up in a bum lead. I have a question to ask everybody though._**  
**  
She tossed the phone down and climbed under the covers, going about the laborious process of changing beneath the spartan concealment offered by the bed linen as she stripped down out of her day-clothes, and into the more comfortable sleeping garments. When she was finished she flipped open her gear again, set her alarm for 6:45AM, set her ringer for 'alarm only' and prepared her last message of the night.

_New Message: Picture Message: All Contacts._

_I want to make a prayer at the Ilex shrine tomorrow on my way through. The man who runs the rest-stop between Ilex and Route 34 told me I should just speak from my heart. But I think it would be better if it wasn't just me. Just send me a message with what you want me to say, and I'll say it. Or send me an audio message, and I'll play it while I'm there._

_Attach: pictureashxmas011_

It was the best candid picture she had of Ash. She'd taken it at Christmas time. It was him opening the gift she'd given: a Friend Ball. He didn't quite have all the wrapping paper off of it yet, but it was easy to see that there was a huge grin creeping onto his face. His mother's gift, a new set of three matching pairs of underwear, was covertly placed behind him.

It was just a simple thing, really, and she guessed that if what had happened to him had not happened this picture would not have nearly the same significance. It seemed far more important now than any picture that had been taken of him during his Orange Island defense or his rise to the top in the Indigo League Finals. Just to see him look so natural. Relaxed. She knew this was the case because there were two people whom she knew would be compelled to cry at least a little bit when she send the picture out.

As she gently wiped the moisture from her own eyes and turned off the ringer on her 'gear, she wondered briefly if Deliah was struggling as much as she was, in spite of her optimistic tone. The fatigue of the day caught up with her, and put her to sleep before she could roll the thought about too much.

The sensation of her 'gear vibrating in her hand brought her to, and within just a few moments, she had worked herself into an upright position. She ran a hand over her face, that hadn't seen makeup or honestly, anything more than a handful of brisk washes in the past week. She just didn't have time. She reached up and took hold of her ponytail, jerking two separate tufts of it in opposite directions, tightening her hair down sloppily against her skull.

She looked around and made sure that her things were in order, but she refrained from checking her phone. When she'd affirmed that everything was, in fact, in its place, she set again about redressing herself, her movements uncomfortably restricted within the pallet. She slipped out when she was done, and rolled her nightclothes up and stuffed them back into her bag. Stepping into her shoes, she shouldered her pack and took one small stretch, before silently departing.

It was still twilight outside, given that it had become somewhat late in the year. It was quiet too, which she found a mixed blessing. She'd grown quite comfortable with solitude since her group had split up. Being by herself didn't bother her, at least not if it meant she was free of Paul's constant, self-righteous complaining and Gary's overtly placid demeanor, even if it was only because she found it so disruptive to her own high-strung nature. On the flip side of the coin, there was the fact that she felt, perhaps for the first time in her life, even after having spent most of her formative years in an effort to evade her sisters and gain independence, truly alone.

It was true that she'd played more than her fair part in the dissolution of her group, one of only four such like it, but she did not see any reason to rebuild those burned down bridges now. Not until they'd found him, at least. Then, slowly, she would work on making things normal again. She'd worry about apologies and confessions and all those other things, then. She'd worry about gearing up to tell Ash what she'd meant to tell him a long time ago, when she saw his face again. She'd worry about making amends with everyone whom she'd stepped on over the past eight weeks, when he was back home. She'd worry about being civil again, when she felt like she had a good enough reason to be. For right now...

She shook her head. The worst part about being alone was that it left your mind idle. She was shouldering a burden that just kept getting heavier and heavier as she discarded more and more in the pursuit of empty leads. She'd stretched her league contacts to their absolute thinnest. She'd pestered every trainer, every coordinator, and every gym leader she could get in contact with on an almost daily basis. She'd even deigned to send word to Cynthia, who'd promised her she would do everything she could, much to Misty's surprise. But there was a price to pay for forwardness. For being so direct and so uncompromisingly thorough. She'd rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and out and out clashed with some. Paul was not the largest of these, either. She doubted that a few of the Kanto gym leaders would ever speak to her again, and her direct confrontation of Lorelei, a woman whom she had long idolized, had done very little but drag her once illustrious reputation as one of the strongest Kanto gym leaders through the mud.

But Misty did not have time for guilt. Nor regret. Nor manners, it seemed, save where it had very little to do with Ash. It was a waste of effort that could be used elsewhere, as far as she was concerned. Still, when she was alone, the old her, the one beneath the serious veneer, the one who was still mourning over this hideous tragedy seemed to seep through the cracks and remind her that she was not quite so invulnerable and uncompromising as she thought.

She heaved a sigh and shoved a stick of chewing gum into her mouth. A substitute for a tooth-brush until she found a place to clean up. The forest was looming out ahead and not far past that would be the Shrine at Ilex, where she would make her prayer and hopefully the prayers of the others, as well.

She flipped out her 'gear and checked her message in-box. Five text messages and two multimedia messages. She read them as she walked.

_May 10:14 – we all miss him. me & drew & solidad & everybody. just pray that he comes home soon for us k?_

_Gary 10:41 – Nothing that you weren't already gonna pray for. Just do it twice, for me._

_Dawn 10:54 – guide everyone out looking for him in the right direction and keep them safe._

_Richie 11:03 – say a prayer for his parents. I saw his dad blubbering the other day, while we were setting up camp. 0_0'_

_Richie 11:15 – My son doesn't need any prayers! He's tough! And I WASN'T blubbering! I had something in my eye!_

She smiled a bit. It was terribly easy to see where Ash got...well, almost everything about him.

When she'd finished glancing through the messages she'd made it to the tree line of Ilex Forest, and she could see, not too far in, the humble wooden structure of the shrine. She folded her hands up, and exhaled as she approached. The trail through Ilex was well worn by the most recent migration of junior trainers, but she tried to remain respectful to the intentions of the thing.

The shrine itself she'd seen once before, it's stained wood and weathered paper charms gave it a look of age that rivaled some of the oldest structures in Kanto. The shrine itself being only about as tall as she was and not much wider, she was very thankful that she was the only one to have come to offer up prayer this morning.

She paused and thought for a moment, on how best to go about it. It was not something she was terribly used to, after all. In fact, she didn't recall at the moment whether or not she had ever actually said a prayer in her life. Now was just as good a time as any to go for it, she supposed. She felt a little silly as she clapped her hands together and bowed her head, like maybe she was being too theatrical, but she forced the thought from her mind.

Would she talk to Arceus? Would she talk to Ash? She wasn't sure what was appropriate. If just talking to Ash was what she intended, how would this be any different from what she caught herself doing on the road, in moments of weakness where she cursed Ash for dragging them all over the place?

She decided it would be best if she just spoke to no one in particular and just pretended to be speaking to the shrine itself. She cleared her throat.

"Please watch over everyone who's out looking for Ash. Keep them on the right track, and keep him safe until one of us can get to him. Keep his parents together, and look after them as well," she said, still failing to grasp at what she really wanted to say personally, deciding to get the group sentiment out of the way first. Nodding, she felt that she'd neatly summarized the thoughts they all wished to extend and so, raised her head.

She palmed her 'gear and opened the first multimedia message, which was from Ash's mother. She'd let this play through first. The display showed Delia seated plainly in the Ketchum residence. She looked tired, but comforted somewhat by the opportunity to offer up her thoughts. Like her, Ash's mother folded her hands, and Misty once more bowed her head a bit in respect, as she revolved the 'gear to face the shrine.

_"Arceus, hear my prayer: See my baby home to his mother, and see that all those in search of him receive the guidance they need. I just ask that you reach out into the hearts of those who've been wounded by these recent events, Arceus, and keep them strong and brave. Watch over Paul and Tracey out past Cinnabar. Watch over Gary and Max in Sinnoh. Watch over Richie and my husband out in the Orange Islands. Watch over Brock and Dawn in Hoenn. Watch over May and Drew and Solidad here in Kanto. Watch over Misty, who's traveling alone in Johto, especially, Arceus. She's been wounded most of all, and she needs you the most. Fill her with the strength she needs to see this search through to the end. Please, most of all help them find my Ash and bring him home!"_ There was a brief pause, and slow exhale and then, _"Amen."_

Misty swallowed hard, and repeated the final word, before turning the 'gear around. She didn't exactly care for being called out but there was no sense in denying the truth. She had behaved pretty monstrously over the past three months and offered up no excuses for it. Still, it somehow bothered her more when she was identified as a victim, as opposed to an antagonist, or someone who was simply obsessed.

The next one was from Brock, who had certainly been the least of her detractors_,_ if to say nothing else. She let it play. Brock sat huddled in a sleeping bag and looked just as tired as Ash's mother had. The fatigue of an all-day walk seemed to hang heavier than it ever had before, something she could attest to.

_"Hey, uh. I'm not so good at this, and it's not really for anyone but...I guess, Ash, to hear so, uh... Could you cover your ears, Misty?"_ he asked his question obviously rhetorical in nature; there was an intentional pause in the recording. She stopped the video message compliantly.

She'd just set it down on the pedestal and walk away for a bit. The whole slab seemed to be pretty well covered in early morning condensation, though, and she didn't care too much for the idea of setting her pokegear in it. She glanced around briefly and found a discarded page of newspaper in the grass nearby. She folded it, laid it atop the pedestal, pushed play on the 'gear and then compliantly stepped out of earshot. She wondered what it was that Brock would be saying. She didn't dare eavesdrop, though. Something Erika had told her several months ago, before this whole mess had gotten started (something that had stuck with her, even if at the time she had told the grass-type trainer off for it) came to mind. Whatever it was, it was between them.

She gave it what she believed was an acceptable amount of time and then stepped back to retrieve her 'gear. Brock's tired, tearful voice stopped her dead in her tracks, though. At almost five minutes in, Brock was still pouring his heart out. She honestly hadn't had any intention of overhearing Brock's message, but it was too late, now.

_"-just don't know what any of us are gonna do, if you don't come home soon. Everything's turned on its ear. It was bad enough when you decided to go train solo, but now,"_ he moaned, betraying a side of himself that Misty would never have expected_. __"Now everyone's just falling apart. Your parents are losing their minds. Gary's just about as unbuttoned as I've ever seen him. Dawn and I are pretty much spending half the day keeping the other one from breaking down. Misty. Arceus, Misty's just grinding herself down to the bone. The last time I saw her she was just...I dunno. Barely there. She was just like, a machine. This has been really hard on her. So just, come home. Don't make this any harder. Come out all right, just like you always do, okay? Tell us all how silly we were to worry about you. But just, please: don't be dead."_

Misty closed her eyes, and sealed her lips together tightly, wishing she hadn't heard that. She felt her heart tremble in her chest for a moment as it always did, and then harden over; sealing off a wave of emotion that she'd keep crushed and compacted away with a few hundred just like it. When she'd release it all, she didn't know, but now wasn't the time.

_"Look, I gotta go. Misty's probably listening in by now. You know how she hates to be left out of the loop. Just remember what I said, okay? We'll see you soon!"_

The image disappeared and she slapped the gear shut, and left it where it lie. She took a breath and tried to collect her own thoughts, as she took great effort to dismiss what she'd accidentally heard. The unintentional dig, everything. It took a long moment, but eventually she was able to collect herself enough to speak. She was ready to say her prayer, now.

"I won't quit," she whispered quietly.

"I don't know where to find him. I can't seem to find anyone who DOES know. I'm throwing everything I have at this and it's getting me nowhere. But I'll keep doing it." She, stopped briefly and considered the word she wanted to use, very carefully. "I just have to... succeed. No matter what. I can't let this go. I can't let it all end like this. I'll do anything. It just has to work." She let the syllables go slowly, so as not to upset herself.

"Just show me a way," she asked. "That's the only thing I have to ask for."

Minutes passed in silence, as her shadow lengthened up the side of the shrine.

"Please just show me a way," she moaned as her voice cracked. "Just show me how!"

The silence of the forest was all there was, however.

"Give me something to go on," she cried out. "I'll take anything!

"Just show me how to find him!" she bellowed. She knew it was foolish to get angry. Foolish even to have put faith at all into something like this. It wasn't honestly, that she felt betrayed. It was just that she was so frustrated, and had no idea what else to do. She stood and cried pitifully into her palms for just a few minutes, until she felt able to rein her runaway emotions in, and squash them again, with the hard flat palm of overriding purpose.

She sniffed hard and rubbed her eyes with her wrist, before gathering up her gear and turning to leave. Azalea Town was a long walk from here. No sense in wasting any more of her time.

As she picked it up, though, for whatever reason, her eyes were drawn to the newspaper beneath it. A headline read '_Two Men at Large for Half a Year, Found._'

Both her hands flew to the page, pulling it tightly between two clenched fists. '_Two men suspected to be involved with the thought-to-be collapsed Isshu crime syndicate 'Team Nebula' were arrested today on charges of illicit trafficking and sales, after having eluded Kanto authorities for nearly six months on similar but separate charges,_' it said. '_An unnamed International Police official declined comment, citing ongoing internal investigations as the cause of the delay between charge and arrest, but offering no official explanation as to what exactly that meant. The two men, going by the aliases 'Doc' and 'Holiday' were not available for questioning._'

Unable to think of anything else to do, she crushed the paper in her hands and screamed as loud as she could.

* * *

**Orre**

**16 Months Earlier**

Realgam Tower was a marvel of modern architecture. Relying on stabilizing field generators to even stay upright, the obtuse spire seemed a perfect display of human ego. As if to defy all previously established restraints, it thrust upward from the desert region like a spear, testingly poised at the face of the heavens. He'd heard that they'd developed a few minor plans for expansion, just before the takeover but that they were laid to rest by various uncanny weather setbacks and unfortunate accidents; as if Orre herself had said in reply to their continued hubris: "You shall go this far and no further."

The ring-structure and floating coliseum on its upper mezzanine had struck him as impressive when he'd first seen it, of course, but if you stripped away the Cipher technology and the dramatic Team Snagem design credo, you'd see it for what it really was: A dead giant, being hollowed out from the inside by a plague wrought of its own foolhardy avarice. The contents no longer belonged to either, of course, so it seemed a matter of some small importance. His organization had crushed the syndicate presence in Orre in only a matter of a few short months, at the height of their weakness following several concurrent arrests and outside investigations made by what seemed to be agents in the service of the Pyrite Police Department.

From all they had been able to dig up, these events were ostensibly unrelated and perpetrated by an Ex-Snagem thug, supposedly bent on revenge, while the other was reportedly by a young trainer in the employ of a Professor Krane. With both Cipher and Snagem already leaderless and in shambles, it had taken only an academic measure of force to actually seize the materials and assets of both, along with requisitioning the legal authority to do so, for the sake of public appearance; something which was his specialty.

Adjusting the collar of this tightly-cut suit, Kazuo, the leader of Team Nebula and the tower's new owner, looked away from his assumed office's vista window and back to the confiscated reports on his desk. All the design specifications for this 'Snag-'Em Machine' from prototype to the most advanced working models, which had been earmarked as stolen, missing, or dismantled were present. There were also technical reports on 'Shadow Pokémon XD001' made by a researcher named Ein, whom, he was certain, would be rounded up and questioned very thoroughly on the matter, at the first possible opportunity.

However, there were other things that needed to happen first. The pet projects of Cipher were interesting indeed and would be looked into with all due fervor, certainly. Yet the interests of his organization, like all of the other Syndicates throughout the world, dictated a very specific agenda that would suffer no others to take precedent. He would have to see to them first, naturally.

A small electronic chime echoed in the recently emptied executive office. He reached past the stacked files and personal belongings, to a touch-sensitive area labeled 'intercom' in the far corner of the display panel built into his assumed desk. The electronic interface 'button' dilated under his fingertip and gave off a stylized ripple, as though it were sending out a signal. He rolled his eyes. Another example of Cipher's needless excess.

"Come in," he said evenly.

Most syndicated organizations had certain precepts of style; something he'd honestly never bought into as a matter of necessity. Team Rocket had their unhealthy obsession with slapping a giant red 'R' on everything they owned. Team Aqua and Magma had their silly head-gear. Snagem had the whole ritualistic baldness and ripped-sleeves get-up. It was something that his organization lacked. That sort of thing, he'd always argued, made you easily identifiable and thus a huge liability, as he much preferred to work outside the public eye. It was easier if brothers were only known to other brothers, so to speak. Not to mention, he found the whole thing sort of obnoxious. However, that was not to say that all in his employ were masters of the incognito.

The man, who walked through the mechanized door, dragging a comb through his greased up hair, was in his element and that much was certain. He almost wanted to slap a hand across his face in total dismay but refrained, knowing it would only further encourage such dramatics. This was the first time he'd seen the man face to face, though technically, he'd been in his employ for quite some time. He took a moment to absorb the display.

He looked rather regal in a way and in another, he was a complete mess. Everything about him was so carelessly thrown together as to suggest this young man literally cared nothing for outward appearances and even less for anyone who would look upon him; yet every stitch of clothing was expensive looking and cut from rich, gaudy materials designed to forcefully arrest the notice of any passerby. Tinted designer glasses with swept-away horned rims were folded casually and thrust without concern for damage into a tiny breast pocket of an eye-catchingly pink bolero-cut jacket that looked to be custom-made, though most likely for a woman. A black shuckle-neck sweatshirt underneath it was pushed up to his elbows and did very little to make him look sensible. His belt was slung casually on his hip, looped through only about half of the retainers on his white skinny-jeans. He strode in a dipping, overly casual gait, dragging scuffed sneakers that were probably quite expensive when they were new. White satin-gloved hands crossed neatly into the crux of his arms, as he came to a wide-legged stop.

Kazuo let his gaze wander back up to his administrator's eyes. A silvery sort of blue that suggested a sharpness entirely out of place on him, sandwiched between the outrageous dress and a slicked-back pompadour. He wondered if those eyes had been surveying him in kind, while he'd sat staring. With him, he supposed that anything was possible.

"Holiday," he acknowledged, letting the man know that he could be at ease, which would have been necessary, he supposed, if he had displayed any sort of decorum whatsoever.

"Boss," Holiday responded, whilst glancing about with alacrity, before letting his gaze fall on the table where something seemed to give him pause. Kazuo noted a rather expressive face; Holiday arched a brow almost comically high and clicked his tongue against the inside of his mouth with a grimace.

"Boss, you told me this was a syndicate outfit." The administrator uncrossed his arms and assumed a rather irritated posture, much to his surprise. "The fuck is all this?" he asked, pointing markedly at a set of items that he'd hastily arranged on the desk this morning. Kazuo looked down at them. A mug that had some personal value, filled with a few pens he'd collected over time and a small novelty toy, a Newton's Cradle, specifically. Leftovers from his old office in the Isshu HQ overseas that he'd brought just out of a force of habit.

He narrowed his eyes, as he looked back up at Holiday. "They're my old things."

The new administrator was already smirking, doubled slightly with the labor of holding down a laugh, when he came back into view. "That's pretty sentimental of you, Boss."

Kazuo blinked, his ire turning slowly to wonder. He wasn't positive he'd just been read but if he had, it was certainly his own fault. He smiled very slowly in return and unfolded his hands from where they'd been threaded together before him in the beginnings of professional anger and spread them out more comfortably. Even if Holiday wasn't everything he seemed, he was certainly interesting. "Is everything acceptable?" he asked, generalizing a great deal.

"Honestly, I'm a little worried about your image, boss," Holiday snorted, continuing to smirk derisively. "That's the type of crap you'd expect to see on some middle management type's desk. You're gonna need to toughen up some, or these new conscripts are gonna walk all over you." He said humorously, seeming to be perfectly aware that he was probably the only one to so thoroughly and thoughtlessly breech decorum.

Kazuo pushed his features flat and apathetically resigned. "I'll take it under advisement. I mean are the facilities in order? What about your partner?"

Holiday shrugged. "Everything is fine. I have everything I need. Doc is waiting in the foyer." He didn't clarify exactly what exactly he meant but instead, gestured outward.

"Good." He nodded. Holiday's work would be a matter of great benefit to their goals, certainly. The means to an end, specifically. First, though, there was an issue that had been impressed upon him as being of the utmost importance. Kazuo reached out onto the table's touch-sensitive surface and gestured across it, opening a user interface, before beginning his explanation. "I'm sending you out on field assignment. I need you to go to Sinnoh. I want you to shadow someone."

Holiday strode to the edge of the table and watched, as the surface visually loaded the requested information. There was a photograph displayed and ushered out toward him across the surfaces with a sweeping motion. Reaching out casually with a finger, he halted its trajectory, as though it were a floating toy in a shallow pool. It reoriented itself instantly, presumably by electronically sensing the orientation of his fingers. It was a picture of a boy, standing in between two other people who'd been mostly cropped out of the photograph. Comparatively, he was short, with a goofy looking trucker cap, over messy black hair and utterly average brown eyes. Ostensibly, he was little more skinny teenager with a dirty face and a stupid smile. A melee of low-opacity profile data scrolled alongside the photograph, contextually displayed only while the photo was stationary, he guessed. He struggled to find anything of any consequence amongst the information as he digested it. "Ash Ketchup, huh? "

"Ketchum," Kazuo corrected as the administrator lifted his head, giving him a slightly expectant glance. "He's a matter of some interest to our guest, it seems." Holiday gave a fast glance down at the data to confirm, and then only nodded. The 'guest' wasn't something they discussed.

"Says he's Kantonese. Why Sinnoh, then?" He raised a brow, as he angled the picture slightly, by gyrating three extended fingers, enlarging it a bit by spreading his fingers, pretending to inspect it with more scrutiny, even though he'd seen all he needed to.

Kazuo smiled. Holiday obviously hadn't had much time to devote to a Pokémon Journey with all of his schooling and so did not understand the nature of life for a teenage trainer. "From Charon, the new head of Team Galactic, we were able to levy a small amount of intelligence on this person," Kazuo explained. "He's there to compete in the Sinnoh League Conference. This intel also says that he's being followed by a small Team Rocket detachment."

"However, since our guest believes that it is necessary for this kid to return to Kanto, I've made arrangements for him to leave Sinnoh as well as to sabotage his Team Rocket detachment. I want you to loosely oversee those arrangements and then reconnoiter with the target in Kanto at the first possible opportunity."

"You said you wanted me to shadow him, not kidnap him. How can we be sure of where he'll go?" Holiday asked rather patiently, in contrast to his previous disinterest.

"The nature of the arrangements will eliminate the likelihood of him going anywhere but here." Kazuo cued up another photograph on the table and slid it across to him, similar to how he had the first. This one was of a two story ranch home: chartreuse, with white window frames. There was a white picket fence and a vegetable garden. There was a woman in the front, watering tomatoes out of one of those green plastic water-cans. Brunette. Thirty, maybe.

"Mother?" he guessed.

"Only parent we could find." The boss nodded. "It's almost a sure thing."

Holiday seemed to remember something. "What about Team Rocket? I don't suppose they're just gonna let us wander around Kanto, fangs out."

Kazuo smirked. "Team Rocket is a rival syndicate, who's territory we have just recently begun to insinuate ourselves in. Your chief concern should be following this Ash kid but it may become necessary to protect certain of our interests in this venture market. I trust that you and your partner will keep Team Nebula's best interests at heart."

"Team Nebula's interests are my interests," he said with a smile. Holiday always kept his own interests at heart.

* * *

He'd lost.

Six on six and not a single word out of his opponent's mouth. Knockout after knockout after knockout, without one single clue as to what his strategy was. He'd fumbled and guessed his way from five to three and then down to one but he just couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on. With no time, or forewarning, he was just reacting after the fact- and poorly.

After backpedaling for thirty some-odd minutes, he'd been beaten, plain and simple. Any normal trainer would have accepted the fact that he'd been out-planned from the beginning and vow to do better next time.

But this was not the time nor the place for 'next time' and Ash Ketchum was about as far from any 'normal trainer' as you could get.

To him, there was no sense in denying that he'd made a healthy contribution toward beating himself. No use convincing himself he'd been outdone by a more talented opponent who seemed to rely on flash-cards he could make neither heads nor tails of, instead of verbal commands. Even if it didn't make sense, he'd been beaten mostly by mistakes and bad tactics from beginning to end, he reminded himself. He'd allowed his opponent to take advantage of those screw ups and now he was paying for it.

No, he thought morbidly, he hadn't 'lost': He'd just as good as given up. The best had to be prepared for anything and it was obvious that he was not.

And so he stooped to clutch the nearly unconscious form of Pikachu to his chest and left the field, holding himself in contempt. There was no fanfare, no confetti, no rushing of the field. There was no great howling or cheering, or even stunned silence, from the crowd. This was mostly due to the fact that as it was the arena was only half full. This loss was of no consequence to anyone. If there were to be real gasps, real moans, those would belong to those who were watching at home. His friends and family. After all, it wasn't as though he'd just lost in the Finals. It wasn't as though the world would stop spinning over this cataclysmic upset.

This had only been his second match. One of three elimination rounds before the tournament competitors were ranked. He wasn't even penciled into a bracket yet! His championship hopes, had he ever truly had any, were over before they started.

He struggled not to feel ill. To him, he felt like the world had come screeching to a halt and left him to slingshot out into space. Or else, he was the only one standing still and in just a few moments the entire world was going to revolve out from under him, to much the same effect.

The end-of-match announcements and crush of reporters echoing through the normally quiet competitor's entrance did little to soothe the fault in his spirit. He smashed his eyelids together as much as he dared, desperate to keep tears from welling up in them, as he steered himself through the gathering on tactile sensation alone.

"What an amazing comeback! Distant underdog Professor Mahogany wins a hard-fought battle against fan-favorite Ash Ketchum! For a match so early in the preliminaries, they sure brought out all the stops," boomed the loudspeaker behind him as he pushed through the small crowd, intent on keeping the bill of his hat well over his face.

From the sounds of things his silent opponent was nearby. He could hear them all scrambling to ask him questions. Jealousy sprang up in him naturally but it was alongside a very bitter remorse. He didn't want anything to do with answering questions right now but he certainly wished it was him who'd just pulled off an upset against a ranked opponent.

"Things were looking pretty grim for you, Professor. What sort of experience did you have to rely on, to see you through a match against Ash Ketchum from Pallet? We haven't seen you at _any_ other conferences!" A professor! He grimaced at the knowledge that his opponent was a Pokémon researcher. Big deal! Why anyone cared was beyond him.

"None," Ash heard clearly as everyone hushed to hear his answer and he felt as though the soles of his shoes were made of glue. The obvious terminus of his thoughts sprang to life. This guy was a nobody. Someone who'd never once battled in his whole entire life? Someone who'd beat him just on theories and simulations? Impossible!

"None? Surely you must have some battling experience. Your methods are quite impressive." Yeah! That absolutely couldn't be right. There was no way he'd just been shown up that badly by a novice. There was no way! He was unlucky but not THAT unlucky.

The affirmation was like a death-sentence for his ego. "None. These are all borrowed Pokémon, from a fellow researcher in Orre. This is the first time I've ever battled competitively." Ever-confident Ash Ketchum would have denied it but the declaration hit hard. So much so he felt utterly compelled to turn away from the crowd, then. Whether it was in shame or rage, he wasn't sure. He found himself biting his tongue as his ire rose but it was like there was a heavy weight in his stomach holding it down, keeping him from expelling it. It wasn't fair. He had trained so hard! Trained for the last year and half, all across Sinnoh! He'd been beaten by someone with no conventional experience, commanding Pokémon he didn't even own!

To say that he now felt quite ill would have been no understatement.

"But they all obey you so well!" He found himself mimicking the reporters disbelieving complement derisively under his breath, as he looked at the moistening image of his shoes. He was thankful that they had somehow found traction again as he hastily vacated the arena by wedging himself between two mic-wielding interlopers on his way out, being as mindful of his furry yellow companion as temperament would allow.

He could hear the Professor over his shoulder, as he muscled a path to the lobby. "Well, you see, it has to do with my resear-" He tried hard to relish the squelching of his opponents voice behind the heavy door, hoping that it would leave him feeling perhaps a little relief, but every discomfort, every self-loathing feeling he'd felt out on the field had been waiting for him on the other side of it, like an angry swarm of Beedrill waiting for its drones to flush their prey into the open. The weight of it hit him now, in full.

He did not make it far at all, before he slumped against the wall, finding it much easier to keep from crying while sitting down. It wasn't exactly comforting to curl his knees up to his shoulders and groan over Pikachu's exhausted form- and it certainly wasn't helping him feel any less sick to his stomach- but even the two bleary forms in his periphery, the approaching Brock and Dawn, did not seem to hold much promise of comfort.

What good was it all? What good did all that hard work do him if some computer jockey with no experience and no practice could beat you without breaking a sweat, just to prove his latest findings? Why had he wasted so much time? Why was he even here? What was the point? What sense did any of this make? It wasn't fair!

"Don't take it so hard, Ash," Brock's voice cut across his train of thought like sharp, broken glass, as the older boy crouched beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was the last thing he wanted, right now. To have to be patted and reassured. Lied to. He grit his teeth "It's not the end of the world."

Their legs in his blurry eyes did not come as a surprise, as he mashed the ball of his palm into his eye, dragging his wrist along his nose in a messy, failed attempt to give himself composure. They would certainly have come looking for him eventually, he thought. Dawn having done well enough in the Grand Festival preliminaries at Lake Valor, as to be granted automatic entry, had come to show her support. Her and Brock were almost certain to have been watching his miserable display.

He released two dry sobs against his will, which proved too strong to hold on to. He tried desperately to choke them off. "Go away," he moaned. Ash hated for people to see him like this.

"Ash," Dawn insisted, folding her legs to the side so that she could sink down beside him on the floor. "Come on, cheer up."

They were both placing him in a semi-embrace that he desperately did not want to be in. Curving their arms over his shoulders, placing consoling hands that carried, for him, something entirely unwanted. He thrashed hard, still as mindful of Pikachu as he could allow himself to be, throwing the offending limbs off of himself. "I don't have what it takes to compete here."

They both plaintively called his name as he stood up amidst them. He didn't want to have an outburst with his friends, after all. He just wanted to get away from them. He spoke as calmly as he could. "I have to get Pikachu to the Pokémon center, now." He began toward the presidium.

"Look, Ash. We're just saying, that there's no reason to beat yourself up over this," he heard Brock begin behind him, standing up.

Dawn cut in now, her voice wavering with concern. "It was just a trick, is all, and you..." The sentence died before it formed fully, however. All present knew that the attempt had unintentionally backhanded him, as he stopped dead in his tracks, turned and locked her in a contemptuous glare.

...And he what? Fell for it? Wasn't good enough to see it coming? Even if she'd meant to say 'did your best', somehow that was even worse!

"Don't wait up for me." He stiffly revolved on his heel, pushing his way out the door. The intensity of his stride was magnified by its finality, as he blended seamlessly with the crowd of competitors making their way to the shuttling ferry that would carry them back to the mainland. Brock and Dawn could only bring themselves to sullenly watch the doors flap back and forth on their hinges, as he left the Sinnoh Coliseum.

* * *

Jessie drew in the loose dirt of Route 223, just outside Sunyshore, with a pointed stick. She had to stop for a minute and erase a bit of what she'd drawn with the toe of her boot and glare at a passerby who'd strayed too close to their conspiratorial meeting, until his path took him well away from the trio. After doing a small double-take to check for further interlopers, she wiped her nose and sniffed before resuming.

"And then we attach them here," she muttered, redrawing two long cylinders on top of a small square at the bottom of a large ovoid shape, "like so."

James gyrated his head slowly, looking up and then away. It was flashy and it had the necessary Team Rocket style to it, sure. But the possibility for death or worse, painful injury were also there, should the event of catastrophic failure arise, which, given the nature of the plan, it most certainly would. Above most things, James hated pain. However, any suggestions or criticisms he had were going to have to follow a lot of placating. Jessie was still angry.

A week ago, Jessie had icily brushed past him amid the cheering of a sold-out crowd at Lake Verity and led the trio wordlessly to Sunyshore city, before abandoning them here at the wharf for several hours and returning only to icily inform them that she had both ascertained and spent their monthly pay. He was oftentimes characteristically dense but it did not take a mental giant to figure out the cause of Jessie's renewed and self-destructive devotion to their old objective of capturing the twerp's Pikachu or her more than characteristic coldness. Jessie's own loss must have stung her, he imagined but for some reason she _really_ hadn't liked the fact that Dawn had lost. Not at all. Jessie would no longer be competing in Contests. The whole situation had left her somehow both disillusioned and reinvigorated.

Her normal competition practice was indefinitely suspended it seemed; burning desire to return to their calling as Rockets in the pursuit of the twerps rare Pokémon had consummately replaced it.

He bit the inside of his cheek as pretended to consider her plan, whilst actively thinking of a way to diffuse it. Meowth, however, was quick to point out the flaws in the plan for what they were. "So, wat? We're just supposed ta blow ourselves up, den?" He rolled his eyes and lifted a paw, dismissive of the plan at face value. "That'll really show da little runt," he snorted sarcastically. "Whaddaya you bet Jimmie? We make it to, oh...I dunno, the second verse'a da motto before those 'tings blow up?" Meowth was guffawing at this point, rolling onto his back with casual feline jocularity.

Not wasting time to gauge Jessie's reaction, James lifted his boot and brought it down viciously on Meowth's extended tail, angling himself so that he stood between the would be murderer and her victim, purposely grinding Meowth's tail into the dirt as he did so.

"Me-OW-th!" The Scratch Cat Pokémon shrieked, preparing his razor-sharp claws for a vengeful counterstrike, when he caught sight of James' icy glare and his probationary gesture towards the concealed figure that stood behind him.

"Remember the Hmn-Mnn-nn-mn," James warned angrily, between sealed lips; a clandestine code word system they had developed for such occasions where they needed to share information without Jessie's knowledge. Translating it relied half on context and iambic pentameter, while the other half was total luck but Meowth knew that James had meant, of course, to say: "Grand Festival."

"Fine," Meowth hissed irritably. "Now, get off my hmm-nn-in' tail, you Hmn-hm-nm!" On James' part, this sentence required considerably less effort to translate.

He had only just barely taken his weight off of his right foot when Jessie's own collided viciously with the small of his back, sending him rolling head over heels, leaving him clutching tearfully at the stinging site of impact. "You're stomping all over the plans, IDIOT!"

Upside down, James watched as Meowth sneered at him. He muttered under his breath as she scratched in the details of her diagram he'd stepped on and righted himself with concern. He had to find a way to diffuse the situation before it got out of control. He felt something beginning to come to him as he looked over the diagram once more. Honestly, they had attempted crazier things but never anything so brazenly tempting of the harsh, harsh laws of physics.

"How do we even know these things will even work?" James asked testingly, of the twin set of turbine jet engines that rested just behind Jessie, hidden rather suspiciously beneath a canvas tarp and their corresponding position on the diagram: the 'cylinders' affixed to the starboard and port sides of the gondola of their hot-air balloon. "These don't seem like the sort of things you can just buy off the street. Who even sold these to you?"

Jessie fixed him with a glare that could have punched through in surgical steel. "Do I look like I don't know my head from a hole in the ground, or something?" she growled. Part of her knew that James had made a rather good point. The guy who'd sold her the turbo-jets had seemed sort of shady to begin with. And what the hell was with that goofy haircut? Still, she reminded herself; she was a Rocket! She wasn't some sissy coordinator! She could do anything she wanted! And she was going to pull it off this time, even if she had to drag these two morons to victory kicking and screaming!

"If you're not going to help me," she roared, "then just get the hell out of my way!"

* * *

The Pokémon Center back on the mainland was crowded and no one paid him much attention, which he was thankful for. They were all too busy talking about matches; mostly upcoming if they were competitors, mostly past if they were spectators. The line to see Nurse Joy was long but everyone seemed chiefly concerned with the daily recap and ongoing coverage of the Sinnoh League preliminaries being displayed on the overhead monitors, affording him the opportunity to get in line almost entirely unnoticed.

He tried not to think of anything as he watched the steady left-foot, right-foot progression of the shoes ahead of his and matched their pace across the speckled linoleum. A set of rather obnoxious voices behind him caught his attention as they filed in behind him.

"So that kid from Pallet choked pretty hard, huh?" a deep, baritone voice seemed to chide him. He looked behind himself almost reflexively. He snapped back around when he saw the gargantuan it belonged to. A tan-skinned Sinnohan in a stretched-out beater, with more hair on his chin than Ash had on his entire body. The guy hadn't been talking to him, though and his anger wavered a bit when it was overcome by the relief that he would not have to shrink away from an obviously pre-decided fight; the guy had to of been almost 90kg of raw muscle and looked like the sort who wasn't afraid to use it. He felt a drop of cold sweat slide down his temple

"Yeah, so what? Wouldn't be the first time some dumb-ass kid got his dreams stomped on," another voice answered.

Just keep your eyes on the ground. He told himself. Just ignore them.

"They say every trainer is gonna have that one loss that haunts them for the rest of their life." Ash closed his eyes and screwed his face up, as he continued the abbreviated pace of the queue He tried to shut his brain off, to ignore what was being said. He desperately did not want that to be true.

"Whatever. Kid was obviously a scrub," the other voice responded, after what seemed like a moment of contemplation, resigning itself to total abject apathy.

What?

He jerked sharply in that direction, to stare openly at his detractor over his shoulder. A tall sort but not cut of the same stock as his friend. Not so much lanky as awkwardly built and visibly out of shape. A scorching pink jacket stole any sort of intimidating quality lent to him by his mass. A goofy, rockabilly haircut replaced it instead with something altogether opposite that.

He looked like the sort of person he'd quietly laugh about once he was out of earshot but when their eyes threatened to meet by chance, Ash quickly looked away and hunched a bit, to hide his face. He felt his cheeks light up in an angry blush.

"Says here he was an Orange Islands champ, Bro. Hey, and the Kanto Battle Frontier!" Ash heard the flapping sound of a program pamphlet. There was only one person left before him in line. He would only have to endure a few moments more. Just a little longer, he told himself, and then you can get out of here.

A sound of dismissal. "Big deal, Scrub's a scrub." The taller one's jacket crinkled annoyingly as he shrugged. "This ain't no fuckin' kiddie-league."

He could feel his back arching a little as his arms straitened and fingers stiffened involuntarily. The hairs on the back of his head felt as hard as bristles against his pushed up collar all of a sudden and he was vaguely aware that he had been biting his lip when Nurse Joy's cheerful request rocked him back to consciousness.

"Can I help whoever is next, please?" she asked, voice elevated. He didn't know it but this was the third time she had repeated herself. He opened his mouth and made a small sound but finding the words to respond jammed up in his throat, he just stepped up to her and handed over his poke balls and then, gently, Pikachu as well.

He could feel eyes coming to rest on him for just a little too long, as he walked away from the counter and took a seat in the crowded waiting area, pretending to be very interested in the texture of his jeans. His anger at being insulted was beginning to evaporate now, replaced by the anxiety caused by invading stares, which he was sure he was exaggerating, with preconceived paranoia.

He hugged his own head as close as he could to his knees and waited miserably for the feeling to pass.

* * *

"WHAT?" The water in the gym's practice pool chopped and cut violently as she slapped the arm not holding a remote against its surface, which had become almost glass-like in her apprehensive stillness.

Kanto Nightly News had taken a moment to show some of the live coverage of the Sinnoh preliminary rounds. Misty, her Pokémon could only guess from the waves and turbulence that upset their post-battle rest, found their coverage inadequate.

As the news-story extrapolated a bit, she looked out of the corner of her eye, to see that her outburst had accidentally flipped Psyduck's life-preserver, leaving his stubby little feet kicking in the air. She reached out with her free hand and righted him, pretending to be just as confused as he was on the matter when he began to quack belligerently at her.

"...and following a grueling six and five defeat, Ash Ketchum leaves the pool for tournament entry earlier than any expected. The hometown favorite was defeated by Orange Archipelago's Professor Mahogany, who claimed to have no actual battle experience. This has got to come as a huge disappointment to-" The Gym Leader let out a shriek of frustration, cutting across the sound-system with surprising effectiveness.

"Well _of course_ it does!" she yelled at the mammoth overhead display that was normally reserved for recording battle scores and presenting replays and close-ups to anyone who might have cared to spectate during a particular battle, now being used to tune in to the local TV station. "Why say something so _stupid_? Who _wouldn't_ be disappointed? What kind of dumba-"

She caught herself as the eyes of Corsola, Psyduck both bobbing silently met with her own. Gyarados, coiled half in and half out of the water, opened one eye testily. Starmie and Staryu seemed to regard her with their gemstones, coming to a dead stop in the air over the middle of the pool. Even her recently evolved Marill, so typically full of pep and verve came screeching to a halt as it hustled laps around the pool, slipping and falling in inadvertently.

She cleared her throat and blushed at them, her tone losing some of its venom. "What?" They all looked away quickly. She glanced back up at the display which now showed footage of Ash marching off the field, holding Pikachu in his arms.

Her spirit sagged heavily at the sight and she pressed the power button on the remote, blanketing the gym in an uncomfortable quiet. She resisted the urge to throw it out into the deep end. Instead, she laboriously placed it at the edge of the pool and heaved a breath before dunking her head under the water and letting out a long groan that floated up to the surface as bubbles.

Though she was sure Ash was somewhere feeling much worse than she did; she practically felt ill. It had been a long time since they'd traveled together but she knew Ash very well. A large part of her still couldn't get used to the fact that it was no longer Brock and herself alongside him, sharing his communal losses and victories, anymore. It wasn't like either of the boys were jumping for joy every time she beat a challenger (or even really bothering to look into it, for that matter) yet she couldn't help but feel a certain melancholy now.

When she came up, she wiped water and hair out of her eyes, before setting both her elbows over the edge and folding her arms, resting her chin there. After a while, she could feel her Pokémon gathering up behind her. Psyduck's frantic doggy-paddling gave them away.

"That sucks," she muttered, reaching out and enveloping as many of them as she could, as much in an effort to console them as herself, as they pressed in, resting a palm on the massive flank of Gyarados, who oddly seemed the most concerned.

* * *

Ash was thankful to leave Sunyshore proper and escape the sidelong glances of what had hours ago been his fellow competitors but now felt like his own personal defaming critics. He'd left the two obnoxious malefactors behind, much to his relief, though now he was free to stew in their words combined with his already extraordinarily low spirits as he tread down the rocky footpath that overlooked the beach, serving to culminate in an altogether fowl condition.

Pikachu, who seemed no less irascible, as if empathizing with his trainer, followed at a liberal distance, seeming to give both parties a wide margin of personal space.

Just a few meters away, unbeknownst to the two defeated competitors, Jessie was busy putting the finishing touches on welding the engines to the outboard riggers of their hot-air balloon which were normally used for ballast containers when she noticed James and Meowth started passing the single pair of binoculars rather suspiciously, out of the corner of her shielded visor. Like most things in the past day or so, this only elevated this constant state of ire that she'd been harboring to critical levels.

She'd instructed them to let her know immediately if anyone was coming, so that she could quickly throw the tarp over the highly suspect propulsion system. Had she stopped to give much consideration to this cover-up, she would have made a note of how out of place a deflated hot-air balloon must have seemed to the average passer-by and just how truly difficult it would have been to explain the presence of one, much less why she was attempting to attach jet-engines to it. These things had just never seemed necessary before.

She popped up her visor and glared large-caliber holes into the backs of their heads. What the hell was going on? Why were they muttering back and forth? If someone was coming, they were supposed to warn her! Every second that she watched them chatter nervously, she felt another blood vessel in her face swell with the inflow of boiling blood. It was so intense she could almost feel the heat. Almost smell the smoke coming from her ears. It wasn't till she looked back to her work, deciding that her two partners were too stupid to even be deserving of her anger, that she realized she had set the wicker gondola on fire.

"'Ey Jess," Meowth whispered frantically, waving his paw behind himself in a beckoning manner, "it's da twoip, and he's all by himsel-"

Had the clang of the welding gun deflecting off his skull as Jessie whipped it ferociously at the feline not cut him off, the strings of curses as she set to dousing the fire certainly would have. James could only watch helplessly as the heavy tool flipped end over end in a high arc. He felt he must have been making a hideous face as it cracked their oncoming quarry sharply across his shin, dropping him to the dirt and hitting Pikachu squarely in the midsection with nearly half and again his mass, as if to punctuate their day's misfortune.

James thought, perhaps, that now would have been the time to do something. The time to capitalize. Ash, getting up off the ground, beat him to the uptake, however. Snarling into the dusty foot path and bringing himself to bear with one fingerless glove crushing into the dirt, as the other grasped his leg. He called out in anger. Everything he'd been holding back since his visit to the Pokémon center boiled over in a split-second.

"Who threw that?" he growled toward the hedge. Pikachu, righting himself as well, matched the inquiry with the same tone of ire, arcs of static leaping off the welding gun as he shoved it off and away from himself. "Pikaaaa?"

James swallowed.

"_I said: who threw that?_" he demanded again in a building roar, now back to his feet and going for the gun.

Jessie, too distracted by the only recently fulfilled need to douse the flames she'd accidentally ignited to tell what had happened, whipped around and shouted at her partner, having mistaken the source of all the noise and knowing only that someone wasn't being as inconspicuous as they should have been. "James," she shrieked, "shut your big mouth! You're gonna give us away!"

This was all Ash needed to hear. He stamped his foot and ground his teeth, as he picked up the heavy tool, turning back to the hedgerow. "Team Rocket," he hollered accusingly, "come out here and take what's coming to you!" Again, Pikachu matched his master's acrimony perfectly, balling up and shaking a tiny yellow fist, as Ash brandished the welding gun threateningly. "Pika-chuuu!"

James turned and sputtered helplessly, as Meowth, just now coming to stood rather weakly and held his throbbing head between his paws. Deliriously, he looked at Jessie who was now approaching the two male Rockets, with a look of fury in her eyes that he was evidently too star-struck to notice. "Did anyone get the plate number on that truck?" he warbled.

James looked back just in time to see Ash rearing back. Alarmed, he tried to turn and warn Jessie but it proved pointless. The young trainer pitched with all the force and accuracy accrued from throwing an untold sum of poke balls. The gun whirled through the bushes and cut the air so close to his nose that he could smell the metallic fragrance of it. It bashed Jessie full in the face and sent her careening to the ground after a moment of stunned wobbling.

At a loss for words, James leaned backwards on his haunches and flopped down on his backside with a groan. Meowth, still loopy, let go of a confused laugh as though he were waiting for someone to chuckle along with him and let him know it was okay.

Seeing none of what had occurred, Ash stormed toward the bushes, matching Jessie, who after only just a second sprang to her feet and began an ominous death march, clenching her teeth and clutching her abused face.

"You're dead, whoever you are!" James and Meowth heard from two simultaneous sources, as the enraged parties grabbed for each other through the bush, neither expecting resistance and momentarily coming to a stand-still. Jessie, however, being the larger and stronger of the two, had Ash clean through the hedge after a second, struggling on the tips of his toes.

Though the young trainer thrashed and squirmed, she carried him with resolute strength, dragging him to the site of the fallen welding gun. She stooped to recollect it before trudging back to where she'd been working, pulling Ash along the whole way, kicking and swinging to no avail.

He was winded when she vaulted him up off the ground and slammed him onto his back, across the rocket-engine. The impact caused the air to explode from him and brought tears to his narrowed eyes. Coughing as he was in a desperate attempt to regain his breath, he still managed to wrestle the weight of her arm off of him, as she fumbled to reattach the welding gun to the line and bring it to bear. He wriggled from underneath her and moved to slide off the engine but in a surprising display of flexibility Jessie pinned him back down again with an authoritative boot, balancing tightly on her one remaining grounded foot.

Jessie ground her heel in a bit as she leaned in towards him, clicking at a spark-maker over the contact tip and bringing the gun to full ignition. "I'm gonna make you pay for this!" She angled her head to display the growing knot and greenish bruise that stretched from her temple to her chin.

Ash reared his arm back threateningly, seeming to be either completely unconcerned with the high-temperature device, or just too angry to realize what she was threatening to do with it. "Bring your ugly face any closer and I'm gonna slug you in it!"

An urgent realization the fell over James and Meowth, as Jessie bared down with her intended murder-weapon and Ash swung for the bleachers, knocking her welding-mask a full 180 degrees and blinding her temporarily as its head-band slumped down over her eyes, providing a reprieve from what could have been a mortal injury; neither one of the two combatants seemed to realize how out of hand the situation had gotten. The two bystanders' move to stop it however, was delayed by Pikachu, who emerged from the hedgerow between them, distracting them momentarily. The Electric Pokémon looked to his left at Meowth, then to his right at James, then finally back ahead at what was happening. Sparks flew from needles of yellow fur and that was the only warning the Rockets ever got.

Billions of volts went through them all at once, its amperage dulled to below a lethal dose as it dissipated through the ground before hitting them. The discharge of electricity was still so forceful that James and Meowth, so close to the point of initial dispersal felt only the sensation of their rigid bodies losing contact with the ground and then rushing again to meet it as they were blown many meters away.

The primary arc, the so-called 'bolt' had not even been directed at them. A white-hot stream of charged ions lit the air, causing the wind to waver with heat distortion and the leaves of the bushes to turn away as the moisture was wicked from them completely. The bolt struck the welding gun and it exploded, most of its components utterly vaporized on contact. Arms of residual current shot radially from the point of impact and into the two brawlers, propelling Ash against the engine and pinning him there, with a paralyzing magnetic cling, while it simply sent Jessie sailing in the opposite direction, with nothing to stop her, until she ran out of momentum.

The fact that she landed in the surf of Sunyshore Beach, some tens of meters away was probably a mixed blessing, considering the sudden spike of current had caused her team rocket jacket to ignite, scorching the normally bold and prominent 'R' to an unrecognizable state.

When Ash, James, Meowth and finally Jessie who floated serenely to the surface, finally came to, they were nursing very strong muscle spasms and residual static shock, though certainly surprised to find themselves in an un-"blasted off" state. Any exposed skin they had was sooted by burnt clothing and their sinuses were irritated by the scent of ozone and scorched hair.

Ash, who had slumped down the side of the oversized turbo-fan he'd been so unceremoniously mounted upon, patted a fire out on the brim of his hat, only realizing it after a moment of motionless, stunned apathy. James managed to drag himself back up into a sitting position, by grabbing large handfuls of grass. He could still feel his legs, which he assumed was generally a good sign but he couldn't get them to do much more than twitch and fill him with a sensation of pins and needles. Meowth, rolling up onto his haunches, was the first to truly come to his senses and also the first to speak. Leaping back into the fray, he faced off with their tiny attacker.

"Wot da heck was all dat about?" he growled, revealing claws that seemed otherwise unpunished by the offensive.

"Pi," Pikachu sighed and turned away, ignoring the feline, to stride slowly towards his trainer.

"Woi you!" Meowth seethed and stepped in threateningly, before the electric type lit him up like a light-bulb and left him in the dust.

* * *

Dawn wiped a little sweat from her brow. Partially because it was hot, of course but also because she was worried. They'd been looking for Ash for hours now and there was no sign of him. He'd checked into the Pokémon Center, that much they'd found out but they'd missed him there. Where he'd gone after that was a total mystery. Brock ended his block-long sprint beside her and hunched onto his knees, to catch his breath.

"See him?" she asked, even though she knew it was pointless. She scanned the street. It would have been like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The streets of Sunyshore were filled with the crush of trainers and spectators moving back and forth from the island. Goofy hats, jackets and fingerless gloves were the norm.

Brock shook his head and Dawn hung hers.

"What do we do," Dawn asked, nervously rubbing her face with both hands, "Call his mom?"

Brock sat up straight and knit his eyebrows. "Are you kidding?" he gasped, leveling a finger at her accusingly, "Maybe you're forgetting:" Brock paused and let his head sag to take in a much needed breath, before shouting, "I'm _responsible_ for you two!"

Dawn was forced to take a step back, countering his sudden incredulousness with a scowl. "So?" she retorted, as she felt it was safe to step in again.

"So?" he waved his hand around in exasperation. "So," he repeated, with a puffed gasp. "So, she asks me," he continued helplessly, now beginning to languish under her gaze.

"Yeah, so?" Dawn drew her features into a questioning sneer and Brock sighed, taking one more breath.

"Dawn, If you ran off and me and Ash couldn't find you, and we called _your _mom," he paused a moment to let the point sink in. "Well, what do you think Johanna would do to us?"

Dawn's eyes went rather wide in realization. "...We've got to find him."

* * *

Everyone managed to collect themselves finally, shied up some by the violent cessation of their quarrel and placated into assisting one another by the looming threat of yet another such display of force. It had taken both James and Ash to fish Jessie out of the surf and get her back on her feet, though of course she made every effort to shrug them off as soon as she was able. When everyone had regrouped in the thicket, there was a very tense silence.

Ash was the first to break it, being naturally the most inquisitive. He nodded toward the gondola. "What are you guys doing back here, anyways?" he asked, the blast of electricity having apparently taken some of the edge off of his earlier anger, though not dissipating it, as was evidenced by his tough stance and crossed arms.

Jessie narrowed her eyes; it didn't seem to her as though he properly regretted hitting her in the face. She certainly didn't care for his tone. She clenched a fist.

"Piii," Pikachu warned softly, forcing her fingers to slowly unlock. No one responded. Pikachu marched towards the retrofitted vehicle and Ash went with him, staying wisely in the sphere of immunity granted to him by his Pokémon.

"Pika?" The rodent asked, reaching out and poking the immense booster with a tiny claw.

"They look pretty fast, whatever they are," Ash ventured a guess, kicking at a side panel on the manifold without concern. "Probably junk, though, knowing Team Rocket."

James watched Jessie's expression turn, if possible, more sour.

After he was finished looking over the aircraft, Jessie was confused when he slapped both of his hands down on it in tentative approval. He turned to face the Rocket trio, with a serious expression, as though he'd made an important decision. "I want you to take me somewhere."

Jessie snarled. "This ain't a taxi-service we're running here, you little ankle-biter!" She shoved James out of the way when he tried to shut her up. "If you need to get somewhere before your next match starts, you should have thought about that beforehand!"

Ash lifted his head to the sky and let go of a held in rebuke in the form of a long sigh. "I'll pay you." He reached in his jacket-pocket and pulled out a tightly wrapped roll of cash. Almost all of his winnings for the past two months. "Half now. Half when we get there."

On cue, there was a chorus of three growling stomachs. Jessie looked sideways at her companions, who were both giving her rather unpleasant looks. The purchase of these engines had emptied their coffers until their next paycheck. The plan had not been executed with much foresight, she admitted, but if they could manage to take the brat's Pikachu then surely things would work out fine. As she looked the little yellow dynamo over and considered what had just befallen them, though, it did not seem so likely that this would come to pass. She angrily stamped her foot and turned away from the situation. Hadn't she just vowed to return to the life of a Rocket? Not some goody-goody who brushed elbows with trainers, who should have been her marks, at the slightest convenience!

She folded one arm across her chest and put an indignant hand into James' face, as he came up beside her. She had a choice to make, at this point and she'd be damned if she was going to let hunger pangs have a role in the decision making. Hers or his. Still, she could tell by the vibes in the air if she didn't pretend to let the boys start having some input, she was going to face a mutiny, soon. No matter how sure she was that she could quell it, Rockets worked as a team.

She heaved an angry sigh and shook her head, wrapping an arm around James' neck and dragging him in close. Her other hand whipped from her chest and caught Meowth's entire head in a rubbery purple grip. She hunkered down into the huddle, after leering dangerously at Ash; a warning to keep his distance until a consensus was reached.

"What do we do?" Jessie said and immediately sucked in a breath of air for the necessary rebuke that was to follow any 'bright idea' either of the two might have offered. Silence, was of course what they produced in light of that, which was just as well, since she intended to go with her own plan from the beginning.

"I say we take the kid out over the ocean, wait till we can't see land anymore, then we blindside him, take his money and his Pokémon, throw him overboard, and make off like bandits." She proposed in earnest and she thought for a moment she could see a sparkle in her partners' eyes. A brief glimmer of the way it used to be.

Ash, only ten or so feet away, scoffed, having heard quite clearly. "What about Pikachu?"

James and Meowth seemed to come out of a dream then and rounded on her, before she could threaten the young trainer out of the conversation. "Yeah! What about Pikachu?"

"Pikachu's t'rowin' around lightnin'-bolts like nobody's business 'ere!" Meowth objected.

"Did you see what he did to poor Meowth?" James indicated the feline's blackened fur. "His beautiful summer coat, ruined!"

"Ruined," Meowth repeated disdainfully, gaining some steam from his partner's support.

She bashed both of them over the head with a balled fist. "Shaddap! Quit whining!"

Ash crossed his arms confidently and put on an ugly smirk, throwing it Jessie's way every time she looked toward him. He held the trump card here. Now, though, a small part of him was concerned for his Pokémon, given that such extreme displays of force were not in his partner's nature. He guessed, though, that it was reasonable to assume that Pikachu was every bit as angry as he was and just looking for someone to take it out on. That assumption ate away at his conscience now. Was this fair, really? He was essentially just picking on Team Rocket just because he could. Getting bashed in the shins with a power-tool wasn't super-pleasant, sure, but the attack had been a little unwarranted. Pikachu's follow-up had kept the situation from getting as out of hand as it could have with all these tempers boiling over but even this was a little past what sat well with him. He muscled down the guilty feeling, though, trying to call to mind all the nasty underhanded things Team Rocket had done to him over the years. He'd just be civil, he decided.

"I'm asking nicely. I just want you to take me home," he said simply, looking away from them and out to the ocean. He couldn't bring himself to be _too_ apologetic at the moment. "If you can't give me a lift, then let's stop wasting each other's time."

Jessie turned around incredulously. "Home?" she snarled, "Do you know how far away Kanto is, you moron?" She slapped a hand against her face, to indicate her own exasperation but forgetting her own injury, let go of a small yelp of pain. "We don't have time to take you home and back before your next match!"

"There is no next match for me, so," he said very quietly into the surf, trying desperately to keep his tone as neutral as possible. "I don't need to come back.

Jessie, as usual, had a follow-up ready and so now was forced to swallow it. Hard. Shunted from the place in her gut it now occupied came a measure of the anger and ruth she had felt watching Dawn walk away empty-handed from the Grand Festival. She tried to smash it back down but it was already out and wreaking havoc on her sensibilities. Like then, she now struggled with an uneasy feeling of empathy for Ash, which was something that confused her. It was no phantom maternal instinct, or anything so stupid as that, she knew but instead one she'd harbored in vast amounts over her career in Team Rocket: She shared everything with James and Meowth, even when she didn't want to, and what Team Rocket had in abundance, was failure.

It was not the fact that she sympathized easily, now, that caused her undue stress. It was the fact that she'd recently began to feel this way about the twerps that bothered her. Had they really been following Ash around for so long, that it was so easy to see him as one of the team? When Dawn had lost, she'd felt anger for losing something that wasn't even hers to lose. She felt that again now for Ash.

It seemed morose to think about but she, perhaps more than most, knew what it felt like to be a loser.

She screwed her face up, to make it seem like she didn't care but she could tell that Meowth and James had cut through that facade like butter, just by the way they looked at her. She just did her best to ignore them and hold on to her irritated expression like a life-raft, as she barked out her orders.

"Stop standing around and get the balloon ready! This kid's money ain't gonna spend itself!"

* * *

**A/N:** Hopefully, the first bit was enough to draw attention. It'll be a while before the story makes it back to that part, but it'll get there. Bearing in mind that most of this was written, or at least conceived before Black/White, or the conclusion of the Diamond & Pearl Series, (Spoiler Ahead?) this follows the events of the show up to Dawn's loss in the Grand Festival and Ash's entry into the Sinnoh League, then changes course dramatically- and may bend canon a little bit, but I'll try and cover my own tracks.


	2. Chapter II

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Summary: Returning home to Pallet town, Ash gets some sound advice from an unexpected source, and though it quakes the foundation of his understanding, he decides to follow it and strike out on a new journey. Meanwhile, Holiday and his partner effectively dispatch Team Rocket.

* * *

**PKMN2K10 **

**Chapter II **

"Once I Wanted to be The Greatest"

Pan-Kanto flight 315 from Sunyshore to Viridian was settling nicely into the waning portion of its 6 hour, non-stop flight. There was practically no turbulence at ten thousand meters, and the air-liner practically floated along at it's 800 kilometer per hour cruising speed. Still, Doc didn't like flying.

He'd managed to distract himself by tearing through the in-flight reading materials, voraciously absorbing two back-issues of Trainer Weekly cover to cover while his finger nervously creased the corner of each page. After that he'd plowed through a Kanto road-atlas so extensively that he felt confident he could guide a tour-bus across it's route system. The flight-safety pamphlet had thereafter exhausted his reading materials. That had been about two hours ago.

He'd spotted a pretty interesting looking paperback adventure novel peeking over the flap of the storage pocket in front of Holiday's seat, but as soon as he'd gone to reach for it his partner had asked the stewardess to clean it out for him, complaining that it was blocking him from putting down his tray. Of course, he'd said all this with a glare in Doc's direction.

"You're a syndicate heavy now, Doc. Act like it," he'd said sharply, setting his tray down and dropping his head onto it, falling asleep again, slovenly.

He wasn't really sure how that worked. He'd gotten a call about two weeks ago, telling him to come to Orre and interview for a job. When he'd got there, Holiday had been waiting for him. He'd been best friends with Holiday in school but he hadn't seen him since then. After graduating, Doc had taken a position under Bruno, while Holiday had left to pursue an internship at Silph Co. Of course, when he'd gotten the call, he had just conveniently quit that position and happened to be looking for a job on the rebound. In a way it had been all too convenient. Perhaps because he'd have never agreed to do it otherwise, and if anyone had known that, Holiday had known that. Now he was an administrator for Team Nebula, something he'd never imagined for himself. Still, it was a pretty good gig so far. Travel and expenses paid, nearly unlimited budget, he worked mostly on his own terms and hey, he got to hang out with his best friend all day!

Though, something was different about Holiday. Something about him had changed quite a bit since they'd last seen each other. Four years was a long time, sure, but this was something else.

...Either way, the life was coming pretty easy, he thought, reaching across the aisle to snatch up another magazine from the pocket across the way as the notion that he was miles in the air inside a tin can with fins bolted to it, threatened to invade his thoughts. The woman sitting there by herself in on that side was asleep and that was fine. Even if she hadn't been, the really cool thing about his job was that he could pretty much do whatever he wanted, as long as it wasn't too serious. Team Nebula wasn't a PR firm, after all. Tough-guy criminals didn't have to take lip from anyone. That, and it helped that he practically filled his seat to the brim with imposing musculature.

He looked down at the magazine in his hands as he pulled back across the aisle. Pokepolitan. Damn it. He glanced sidelong at Holiday, who was now drooling, and decided he didn't care. He folded the cover back over onto itself so that it was not readily apparent what he was reading, and scanned the pages with vigor.

* * *

Ash's eyes flicked open and he checked all his belongings instantly, with a panicked series of slaps to his waistline. Poke balls, wallet, dex, lucky handkerchief, all there. He glanced sharply around, spotting Pikachu asleep beside him. It didn't seem as though he was in any sort of glass container. No rubber gloves clutching him, no nets, no snares. It was almost surreal. He blinked hard a few times to make sure he wasn't having a lucid dream, and was further surprised to find that he wasn't.

From where he had fallen asleep, slumped in the corner, he looked towards the other end of the gondola, that had been elongated to accommodate the added mass of the two jet engines, which in spite of almost everything he would have assumed to be true about flight in general, were still attached and still running, serving to propel the balloon forward at speed, rather than to simply blow it up, as he have imagined. James and Meowth, like him, were asleep in spite of the roar while Jessie's eyes were locked ahead, as she stood at the controls.

It had been fair to be hesitant once he'd found out what the two large objects had been. He'd demanded a flight test before he was willing to set foot on the thing. They'd obliged him, though it hadn't made him any less concerned when Jessie had led him behind an embankment, some three-hundred meters away, communicating with the flight-team with an oversized radio, before the initial start-up. Only when the balloon was in the air with the engines brought to an active standby had she been willing to emerge to watch.

The first pass was done at 75% power and had produced a full on vertical roll, the gondola whipping up and over the balloon with just the slightest maneuver. Luckily, it'd happened so fast the canopy hadn't had time to collapse, and send the entire contraption plummeting to the water in a ball of fire. Wisely, and after much screaming and insults from Jessie, James backed it down to 10% for the remainder of the flight tests.

He'd gotten on the balloon somewhat less grudgingly, but needless to say, it had not been without reservations.

He stood up and looked out ahead, and was surprised to see that he could see mainland Kanto out ahead on the distant horizon. How long had he been asleep? He turned back to look at Jessie who was now somehow dressed in a black captain's uniform bearing a huge red R across the double-breasted coat, as was Team Rocket's particular flair for costumes. He rolled his eyes and slumped over onto the edge of the basket, as he turned back toward their destination.

* * *

"So I'm trying to figure out which personality category you fit in, but I'm having a hard time deciding if you are introverted or extroverted. Which are you?" Doc's voice knifed into his unconsciousness, rousing him instantly.

The admin blinked and wiped his mouth. "Do what?" He could feel the plane descending as it came in for landing.

"I'm thinking you are extroverted. You always speak your mind," Doc noted, looking down at a rolled up magazine.

Holiday sneered. "Bitch, Gimme that!" He reached for the magazine that was retracted, but a secondary and much more violent snatch caught hold of it.

He didn't bother looking at it, as he already knew what it was. He simply threw it back across the aisle, into the sleeping woman's lap, who woke with a start and glared at him. "I love how you woke me up to ask questions out of Ms. Aging McLonelyheart's magazine, there." He said, glaring back just as hard as he intentionally expanded the insult to cover both parties. He was pleased when both promptly buttoned it up.

Paying no further mind of his partner, Holiday looked down at his Poketch, taking note of the time as the plane hit tarmac. The Boss would be expecting a report soon, certainly, but he hadn't triggered the explosives yet. The bomb was in place and everything was set, but he needed to get a visual confirmation. A sloppier person might've just activated it and said the hell with it. He intended to do better than that. He was a lot of things, but sloppy wasn't one of them. He looked down at his 'gear, as he retracted it from his pocket. One unread message from a private caller. He opened it.

'**Hello**,' It said; the automated trigger sending him an innocuous seeming signal, informing him that the detonator was armed and primed. '**Goodbye**,' he would respond, when he intended for the explosives to go off. For now, however, he closed it.

After a hasty deceleration that left his partner looking relieved, the plane taxied off the runway and into the terminal. Within just a few minutes, both he and Doc managed to find themselves through customs and stepped foot onto Kantonese soil without incident.

"So what now?" Doc asked, the tone of his voice suggesting his partner's previous outburst was forgotten, "how do we meet back up with the kid?"

Holiday shrugged. "Boss said he had feelers in place, so once he hits home we'll know about it." He turned and pointed in the direction of the observation area. "For now we worry about getting this Team Rocket thing taken care of."

Doc waved him off, as they approached the row of glass doors that led to the outdoor platform. "Nah. I'll wait in here." He saw the some hundreds of people standing outside, almost every one nervously huffing a post or pre-flight cigarette and filling the air with a thick cloud of tar-smoke. "That shit's bad for your health."

Holiday gave him a look that was scathing but suggested he had no words to waste just now and simply continued without further hesitation.

Holiday pushed his way to the outward-most part of the fifth floor observation deck, and inspected the surrounding landscape from the high vantage. Mountains skirted most of the city to the northwest, and to the west was the Johto border, opposite of Indigo Plateau, which stood loftily over the winding etch of Victory road as it lost definition out into the distance. The Viridian Forest did not stand as close as to the city's due-northern border as it probably once had, he noted. The pushed down features of the landscape suggested some degree of deforestation. Though the eastern edge of the city gave rise to a vastness of open land before the bay of Vermillion, a low-lying inlet valley to the south contained the most likely entry-route. Not only was it the most direct route, it was also the most obscured. High sea-side cliffs rose on either side of the valley and would afford a certain level of concealment.

He flipped open his 'gear again and thumbed through the menu until he reached the map function. An exception popped up on screen informing him that he was currently "**Roaming**" and he mashed the okay button repeatedly in aggravation, until it re-established connection with the service signal.

A simplified map of Kanto filled the screen; towns and areas of significance represented by pastel-colored squares on an earth-colored layout. A red exclamation point winked in and out of sight near the analogous position on the map where he expected his quarry to arrive. He nodded confidently as he returned the 'gear to his pocket, and turned to glare out over the horizon. Though the sun was to his back, it seemed to reflect back at him sufficiently from the bay to render him blind to almost all detail outside of a mile or so, obscuring it in a haze of whiteness.

He dug in an inside breast pocket for his glasses, removed them, and placed them lopsidedly onto his face. With another growl of frustration he ripped them off, and tweaked them back into shape, before donning them again. His focus was not enough to keep him from sneering nastily in return to a few amused looks his obnoxious horned rims earned him. He took another look and finding the telltale condensation trails coming in low off the sea, he turned and walked away.

* * *

Ash felt a wave of relief pass over him, as he climbed over the edge of the gondola and landed neatly on the ground just a few feet below. Solid ground underneath him had never felt like such a precious commodity before, and now he was reveling in it. He took just a few paces across the width of Route 1 to re-establish himself with Terra Firma, as he found his first steps to be wobbly. Partially, though, this relief was due to being able to leave the rather tense company the past 8 hours had seen him keep.

He turned back to his foils turned one time chauffeurs and heaved a sigh. Time to pay what he owed, he supposed. They were dirty cheats, but that didn't mean he was, after all. There were no mishaps, luckily. Pikachu saw to that, watching with stern skepticism as Ash counted out the promised amount and laid it into the collective hands of Team Rocket, whom all regarded it with the reverence of the deceased, before Jessie snatched it away into some untold recess of her overblown uniform.

The young trainer took a few steps back then, unsure if there were to be parting words or a surprise attack, but then hesitantly turned away and took up a sprint as the trio watched in silence.

"Weird," Meowth commented.

"The twerp didn't even say 'thank you'," James concurred.

"Who cares," Jessie replied, sardonically, giving them both a good pop to the head to jar their memory. "The brat's loaded and I'm starving!"

There was a massive surge of motion as the trio clambered all over each other to get out of the balloon and make preparations to leave.

* * *

Brock felt his right eye slam shut in defiance as he willed his left eye to remain partially cracked, in order to watch the door of the Pokemon Center. For hours now, he'd been waiting, hoping that Ash would come through it. He didn't think he'd fallen asleep, but he couldn't remember a whole lot of specifics about what had taken place before the past five seconds or so.

Next to him, he felt Dawn stir from where she'd fallen asleep and heard her mutter a bit before accusing him of doing the same. He didn't waste the energy required to argue. She was miles away, to him.

"Meh," he offered, and stood up, walking slowly to reception. When he reached it, he placed both hands on the counter to steady his lethargic balance.

"I'm sorry, but has a short little guy with a goofy trucker cap come through here?" he asked, in a slight drawl, pantomiming weakly. When the woman behind the desk looked helpless, he extrapolated.

"Sloppy hair?" he gestured to his head and made a back and forth motion. "Dirty cheeks?" he did the same to his face.

"Sweetheart, there's a league tournament going on," the woman reminded him with a pleasant tone. "There aren't a whole lot of people in town who don't match that description, right now."

Brock scratched the side of his head in embarrassment as that fact sank into his exhausted head. This must have triggered some sympathy, he noticed, as she reached for a tablet. "If you give me his name, I can come up to your room and wake you up, if he checks in."

For a moment his drained thought-process drew a blank, and that was just long enough for him to realize who he was talking to. Nurse Joy had just offered to come up to his room. A smile worked its way into the corner of his mouth, and on top of it, the beginnings of a tired grin, which eventually worked his lips into such a wrinkled mess that he became very self-conscious of the fact that Joy had asked him a question, while he was standing there making a dumb face.

He cut to the chase. "My friends name? Oh, his name is Ash! But I was thinking, that if you're already going to come up to see me, maybe we could take the time to get better acquainted with one ano-"

The air was knocked out of him as Croagunk's poison jab connected with his gut, denying him further comment. Dawn, clutching the frog Pokemon's poke ball, ripped from Brock's own belt in a moment of frustration, turned to offer her thanks before assisting in dragging Brock away. As they made it to the stairs she waited for Brock to recuperate, not having the energy to take him any further. Coming to his senses again, he recalled the poison type Pokemon and together he and dawn mounted the stairs.

"Do you think he's alright?" she said, the worry evident in her tired voice, and he began to feel a little guilty for stirring up the fear-frenzy the day before. He was worried, admittedly, but there really wasn't any mortal peril.

"Ash's mom isn't really going to murder us and hide the bodies in her garden, Dawn."

"I know," she grumbled, "I'm just worried about Ash!"

He nodded understandingly. "Well, I'm sure he'll turn up. He probably just needed to blow off some steam, and didn't want either of us around," he offered.

As Dawn crested the last step she heaved a long sigh. "For this long?" She glanced at her Poketch. "He left almost 12 hours ago. That's a lot of steam, Brock."

"He did say not to wait up," Brock observed, shouldering open the door to his room, as Dawn fumbled with the knob to hers across the hall.

"I hope you're right."

"Not much that we can do about it. Just try and get some rest. If he's not back by the time I wake up," he yawned, as he stepped into his accommodations and turned to talk across the hallway, "then I guess I'll make some calls."

His advice proved pointless, however, as he found Dawn had already closed the door to her room. If his own fatigue was any indication, she was already passed out. Retiring to his own room, he managed to get one shoe off before he was flopped out on the bed and snoring.

* * *

Ash hustled the forty-five minutes home so mindlessly that he was scarcely aware that he'd even stepped into Pallet Town, until he was practically at the threshold of his own home. He paused and knocked twice, before opening the door to his house.

"Oh! Hi Sweetie!" his mom said with a small gasp of surprise as she rounded the corner into the living room and caught sight of him. "You're home so soon!"

He nodded briefly in agreement, deciding that it was best not to complicate things by saying exactly how. He just raised his hand in greeting, and smiled weakly. He was thankful when she didn't press the issue. "You look worn out, Ash. Come inside, and I'll fix you a drink."

She beckoned him towards the kitchen with a pleasant expression, and turned, pulling off her canvas gloves, that she'd evidently been on her way to tend the garden with, to invest herself in a new task. Ash took the opportunity to remain silent and followed his mother into the kitchen, throwing his backpack over the back of a chair before slumping into it, as Pikachu hopped into the one next to him. His mother opened the nearest cabinet and withdrew a glass, placing it in front of him on the table before crossing the kitchen toward the refrigerator.

"Anything you'd like to talk about?", she asked at last.

Ash crossed his arms on the table, leaning onto his elbows for a moment, before raising a hand to dismiss the notion "Not really. I'm sure you saw it on T.V."

Returning, his mother filled his glass with cold lemonade from a pitcher and set it on the table, before sitting down across from him. "That bad, huh?"

He glanced up at his mother, then. Her face was calm and sympathetic, but optimistic. "I dunno. I feel pretty lousy." He took a drink of his lemonade, and tried not to say anything else about it.

"Well," she began, opening her hands in a welcoming way, and reclining comfortably against the table with him, mimicking the way he'd put his elbows down, "try not to let it get you down, Ash."

When he muttered noncommittally she continued. "I'm glad to have you home, either way."

She smiled warmly, and he found that he couldn't help but smile back, if only to humor her. He drained the last of the lemonade, and let out a yawn in spite of himself. He wondered how he could still be tired, having slept nearly the whole flight. He was certain the fact that there were two jet engines and three untrustworthy criminals within 10 feet of him the whole time might have something to do with it. Didn't they call that jet-lag? Glancing over, he could see that his partner, now curled tightly into a sleeping ball had been similarly affected.

"I think I'm going to take a nap here soon," he offered, taking off his hat and letting it slap into his lap, as he worked at the first button of his collar.

She nodded her acceptance and rose before him, taking away his glass before giving the spot where it'd sat a brisk wipe with a dishtowel, to collect any stray moisture. "So, how did you make it home so quickly?"

Caught off guard, he reeled for an answer. "Uh..."

He glanced around, hoping to catch sight of something that would inspire a decent excuse. The refrigerator being naturally the first thing he looked at, he took note of a fair amount of decorative magnets, the sort that his mom, like all moms, thought were cute. Smooth, he thought.

"I took the magnet train!" He explained, lying outright.

"Oh? All the way from Sinnoh?" She quirked a brow.

That's right. Sinnoh's across the ocean, he remembered. What a dumb thing to forget. He offered a shrug, preferring not to stack another lie on top of the one he'd already told.

"Did your friends make it home all right?" She asked, her tone becoming gradually more suspicious, even though it seemed she'd let the incident slide.

"Um." He was at a loss again. "Well..."

"Ash Ketchum." He flinched. He hated it when she called him by his full name. It always meant trouble. "What aren't you telling me, young man?"

* * *

"So what's going on," Doc questioned, making a gesture towards the balloon above them, "what are we doing out here? I thought you said you handled this."

"_Going to_," Holiday reminded him. "I said I was _going to_ handle this."

"Well, I mean, shouldn't it be blown to bits, then? That's what the Boss said he wanted, right?"

Holiday just shrugged. "Do you do everything you're told, man?"

"I try to when the one giving orders is the leader of a multinational crime syndicate," Doc countered flatly.

Holiday rolled his eyes waved him off, like he was being a coward. "The boss said to make sure that the kid's Team Rocket tail was a non-issue. I'm doing that." He continued disassembling the the outer chassis of the left-side engine.

Doc looked skeptical. "I don't get it."

Holiday grumbled. One of the things that he hated the most was having to explain things. He banged his wrench sharply against a support strut. "That's nice. Working with high-explosives here."

Doc took one precautionary step away. Ignoring him, Holiday continued removing panel after panel until he'd revealed the tightly packed blocks of explosive polymer, still wrapped in their brown designation paper that marked them as CLASS A. Doc was baffled when he stood up and diligently collected the pieces he'd removed, before tossing the lot of it into the brush and out of sight. Doc's bewilderment only increased when Holiday turned, and shoved his 'gear at him. He took it reluctantly.

"Get somewhere where you can still see what's going on right here," Holiday began, stopping briefly to consider something. "Someplace with something sturdy to hide behind. Big rock or some shit," he added, finally, and then began to walk away.

"Wait-hey!" Doc reached out to stop the other Admin. "Why," he demanded, "what's the point of any of this?"

Holiday shook his partners hand off his sleeve and favored him suddenly with a look of contempt. "Lets play a game. A game called 'Imagine'."

"Imagine I set this thing off just as soon as I know these Rockets are back. Imagine, then, that we'll be ankle deep in tiny little chunks of Rocket."

"But also Imagine that tiny little chunks of Rocket means a great deal more here in Kanto than they do out over the ocean. Imagine that shortly after that goes down, we could expect to garner a lot of attention. A lot of unwanted attention. You already heard that we were gonna be in this for the long haul."

"So then why didn't you blow it up then, like you were supposed to?" Doc asked incredulously, repeating his previous concern.

Holiday shook his head, and knit his brows. "I'm not sure I care for your tone." When the look did not relent, he sighed hard. "Think about it," he asserted, "we tailed that kid all the way out of Sunyshore Right in the same direction I sent those Rocket dolts with this hardware in the first place. We had no fucking way of knowing what happened from there. How pissed off do you think the Boss'd be if I'd made the mistake of setting this thing off while they were tailing the kid? They had to have been close to him, otherwise, why would they be here?"

Holiday crossed his arms. "Or are you no good at playing 'Imagine'?" He made a rather arrogant face that Doc recognized as the one Holiday always assumed when he knew he'd won an argument.

Doc rolled his eyes. "Well, I still don't understand why we're here," he commented. "The kid obviously isn't here, if he ever was. Shouldn't we be out looking for these Rocket characters?"

Holiday slapped his forehead. "What am I, a b-movie villain?" he harrumphed, "Let me keep a little of the mystery alive, bro!"

Holiday pointed to a distance vantage on a nearby wooded hill. "Just get out of sight, will you?" He pushed his hands forward placatingly. "Don't do anything unless it looks like they're about to get away. If that happens, just hit send, and hit the deck. Otherwise, I'll come back for you when it's all over."

Doc sputtered behind him, but he just waved dismissively over his shoulder as he walked back towards town.

* * *

Having spent a sizable portion of their earnings on a meal fit for any number of kings, Team Rocket strode slowly out of town, back down Route 1 to where they had inconspicuously anchored their balloon, slowed by the impedimenta of a full belly.

"I couldn't have eaten another bite," James groaned. "That eleventh helping of lobster bisque was just too much."

Meowth picked his at his teeth with a complementary toothpick. "You said it, Jimmy."

Jessie, similarly affected, feigned disgust at both of the them, then let out a sizable belch and the now quite merry trio shared in a good laugh, their former worries and woes seemingly forgotten and pushed aside. Perhaps lobster bisque healed all wounds. They shared in the recounting of their decadent meal with groans and moans and did not take notice of the figure casually watching them from a roadside telephone booth as they passed. Which was a shame, really, because it was hard to forget such a flamboyant appearance as Holiday's.

The man in question stood leaning against the glass of a roadside videophone booth, the receiver ringing in his right hand, the thumb of his left over the digital lens, to obscure his image. He'd been pretending to hold a conversation, but when the line was picked up from the other end, he muted his voice.

"Hello, this is the Viridian City Crime Watch Tip Hot-Line," A blue-haired officer informed him, as her image expanded onto the obsolete tube screen.

"Route 1. Two people with R's on their jackets. One man. One woman. One Pokemon, a Meowth. Maybe more," he rushed, with faked urgency.

"Sir-?"

"They're hiding explosives, just off the road. I think they may be planning some sort of terrorist attack, like the recent PLF bombings in Isshu."

"Sir, please stay on the li-"

His finishing blow struck, Holiday slammed down the receiver and stepped out of the booth, pretending to clap the dust from his hands. Beginning a steady walk into town to construct a reasonable alibi, he was impressed with the sudden and thorough reaction that the 'T'-word induced: within just a block's distance, he was watching the blue and red lights go by with feigned interest.

* * *

"Ask Ketchum! I am surprised at you! Call your friends right this instant, and let them know you're okay!"

Ash knit his brows. He didn't need to check up on them. They weren't babies- and neither was he! What was the big deal? "Sure mom," he deflected, "I'll call them, alright?" He looked away from her when she continued to stare him down. "I'd rather not have this discussion right now okay?"

"Well, tough," she asserted, placing her hands on her hips. "You march yourself upstairs right now!"

And then, just then, the last of his patience snapped. That was it, he decided.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded, raising her voice as he pushed himself away from the table with a loud groan and marched toward the rear kitchen door. He's started to lift his backpack from where he had set it on the table, but then cast it aside. He didn't need it. He wasn't going to do any training anytime soon. Leave it to her to decide what to do with it, he thought.

"Out!" He yelled back as he shoved through the screen door and left it rocking back on it's hinges behind him, as Pikachu, roused by the sudden outburst led the way, just as gloomily as he, out to the back gate.

He'd come home wanting to see his mother, wanting to find a little bit of comfort and instead he'd gotten a guilt-trip! He was infuriated that his desire to talk to her had already bottomed out. For Arceus' sake, it wasn't like he'd come here looking to get a bunch of sympathy, and have his back patted until he fell asleep, or anything! He'd just wanted his mother to give him a little guidance, a little support or something! Sure, the intention was to feel better, but it didn't really make him a cry-baby or anything to want to see his own mother, did it? So what if he'd come back alone? It wasn't like Brock and Dawn were helpless without him. And so what if they were! They hadn't just taken the worst loss of their lives! At least Dawn had come close to winning! What right did anyone have to be angry at him?

Lost in hateful thought, he tried to give the back gate the same treatment he had the door, but missed noting that the latch, as usual, was shut and so instead of blowing through it, he was stopped dead from the midsection down, while his leading shoulder connected with nothing. The result was an unintentional somersault and face-plant.

He yelled out in pain and then embarrassment and then in rage. He could hear his mother calling after him, probably trying to make sure he was alright. This had happened a few times before, due to his clumsiness after all, something that just made it all the more unbearable. He thrashed an arm behind himself, signaling that he didn't want to speak to her anymore and then took off like a shot down the road and trying to put distance between him and the house.

He rubbed the imprint of the ground from his face, once he made it to the edge of town, where the houses fell away to the long, empty dirt roads of the lesser traveled paths out of town; to Oak's Reservation, and to the shore front, and some smaller paths that led to no particular destination at all, just wound into the countryside until they disappeared. He knew Route 1 had been paved recently, though he remembered, it had not been when he'd left for his own journey. It, like any other route into, out of, or even through Pallet at the time, was the same: dusty, packed-in earth. And though that it had changed, somehow the 'modern luxury' of pavement had stretched only to the northern outskirts of town, and not a single meter within it's borders.

He guessed he should have been thankful. Falling on pavement, he was more than aware, did not hurt considerably less.

Still, it did say something about this place. Either that it was too scared to change, or too set in its ways to be bothered changing, even if it was for the better. Ash had been to a lot of places and none of them, not even the places that might've been considered its equal in the other regions he'd been to, was quite so dedicated to remaining as untouched by the rest of modern civilization. In his eyes it was at best, dreadfully boring, at worst, simply dreadful.

Truthfully didn't hate Pallet town. No, not at all. Though, he could remember a time when he had. A time before he'd left on his journey. A time when he'd felt the same sort of nagging, all-consuming contempt for the shackles of youth he guessed all nine-year-olds felt watching their older peers walk off into the sunrise with grins on their faces and dreams in their hearts. But there was a trend in Pallet and that was something he didn't come to understand until much later: Most of those people the town watched walk off over the hills of Route 1? They didn't come back.

Not because something ill befell them, of course. Just because, he guessed, who would really want to? Out there was adventure! Out there was freedom! Here? Well, here was nothing. Once you got out there, why on earth would you ever want to come back? He crossed his arms and tried not to let the thought of his mother cross his mind. She was pretty much the sole reason, for him personally, but he was still pissed, so that was inadmissible for the time being, as far as he was concerned.

He spat to the dirt, as he turned and began to walk in the opposite direction, having run out of real road to walk on at the edge of the small town. He frowned at the thought that he was equally as likely to find anything of interest in any other direction, but he walked on anyways. "What a dump."

Pikachu, at his side did not respond, but followed him closely, as he turned, seeming to be no more interested than he was.

It wasn't long before he ran out of things to be cynical about, given that it was not really in his nature. However, being stubborn certainly was and so he was left with the question of what to do, until he'd cooled off enough, and perhaps more importantly, let his mother cool off sufficiently, that he felt it safe to step foot in his house again. That left a limited number of options, of course.

Since there was really only one thing of interest in town, his decision was made for him. After another short trek across the length of the town, something Pikachu didn't seem thrilled about, he found himself at the front door of Professor Oak's Laboratory. Though modest compared to some research labs he'd seen, it seemed like the most modern structure in town. He imagined it would have all the "green" considerations that seemed to be the rage these days. Recycled rainwater, solar panels, wind generators, all those super-efficient insulated windows you were always seeing advertised on television. Though, to Ash, you could have said that simply having two bathrooms made it the most modern structure in Pallet Town and he would have believed it.

He rang the doorbell and waited quietly, trying not to invest a whole lot into the prospect of getting inside. He wasn't sure that the Professor was in, after all and he wasn't in any real emotional shape to handle anything but passing disappointment. When the door opened, however, he couldn't help but smile. It was Tracey, whom he was happy to see. He hadn't seen Tracey in a long time.

"Can I help you?" The green-haired research assistant asked, regarding him through the partially opened doorway, with open curiosity.

Figures, Ash thought, his eyebrows flattening out instantly. Tracey didn't even recognize him. He supposed that he shouldn't have been all that surprised. It had been years, after all. But still, it was a another lump to swallow, another slight to ignore. He tried to hold onto the smile, but it sort of contorted a bit before he could catch it. "It's me." He said, rather more quietly than he meant to. "Ash."

He was relieved when he saw recognition fill all the features of his friend and one-time traveling companions face. "Oh goodness!" He exclaimed. "I'm sorry!" He reached out and patted Ash on the shoulder. "I didn't even recognize you. You've, gro -ehm," he let go of a small cough, "changed your look around a bit, huh?"

Ash wondered if he detected the slightest double-take. He ignored it, however, and looked down at his own clothes. His look had probably changed a little. The old blue jacket replaced by a black and yellow vest. _Was it really that big of a difference, though?_ He didn't pull his lips to the side skeptically, though, as he might have any other time. He just ignored it. Better to ignore it. He looked at Tracey more intensely. He'd grown quite a bit, as he should have. Like Brock, he was pretty much an adult now. He could even see a bit of five-o-clock shadow on Tracey's once boyish face.

No such luck for himself, he thought ruefully. He was still the same old short, scrawny kid. He shrugged, both to clear his current line of self-abuse and to dismiss Tracey's apology. "It's alright." He stopped himself from saying something along the lines of 'I get that a lot.', for fear that he would start to. "Can I come in?"

"Sure, sure!" Tracey said with emphasis, ushering him through the doorway with an easy, if somewhat embarrassed smile. Once inside, he looked over Oaks two-story loft workspace with something like subdued interest. It was nothing he hadn't seen before and he'd never held any real interest in Pokemon research as a field per se, but it was the sort of stuff it seemed like you ought to at least pretend to find interesting, otherwise people might think you were stupid by default.

He reached out and picked up something that caught his eye and turned it over in his hands. It was cylindrical, but it kind of tapered off, and had a hook on one end. He didn't glance over at Tracey, but just continued to look at it interrogatively.

"Find something interesting there?" Tracey asked, closing the door behind himself, and taking off his lab-coat to hang by the door. Something about Tracey's tone told him that he was being patronizing, not expecting him to know what it was. Which was true.

"Mnn." he offered. "What is it? Some new experiment or something?" There was something of a strangled noise that told him he wasn't going to like the answer.

"That's my thermos, Ash." Tracey explained with a muffled chortle.

Ash closed his eyes, feeling his cheeks turn blue. He set the 'device' back down on the table. "Oh." He managed, though bailing himself out of that one was pretty much a lost cause. He was glad Tracey wasn't the sort to overindulge in a laugh at another's expense. He sighed and opened his eyes, turning to face the research assistant with an embarrassed smirk.

"C'mon, the Professor is upstairs." He gestured, and Ash followed him, up to the loft, where Professor Oak was seated quietly at a computer console, of the sort you couldn't buy in stores. Or maybe there was that sort of computer in the middle of all of it, but it was just so closely surrounded by other machines that it seemed that way. Ash obviously didn't know much about it and so he just looked at the Professor, who turned in his chair to great him.

"Hello, Ash! How are you?"

"Hello Professor." He said, waving ever so slightly. "I'm alright."

"Just saw you on last night's sports-recap. I bet you never thought a researcher like me would be the one to knock you out of the Sinnoh League, huh?" Professor Oak asked so genuinely, that at first the comment didn't sting him at all.

At first, anyways. It was like dragging an accidental nail across a cut that hadn't quite scabbed over yet. You couldn't really get mad about it, but it still hurt. He felt all of his features start to flip-flop, between an effort to display his true emotion, and to plaster on a good-humored expression for the professor's sake. It was obvious from the Professor's growing expression of concern, that he was failing at both.

"Uh ...No." He sputtered. "Nope. Sure didn't." He tried to finish up by shaking his head no, but it came out as a nod at first, corrected halfway through.

"Grandpa. You're being insensitive." A voice from over his shoulder caught him off guard. At first, he thought it was Tracey, catching sight of the lab-coat, but he remembered having seen Tracey take his off, downstairs. But, he thought, that wouldn't have made any sense. Unless some things had really changed with Tracey, since he'd seen him last, the sketch artist turned research assistant was still no relation to the Pokemon Professor.

He turned to face Gary Oak.

His old rival withdrew his hands from the pockets of his lab coat and held them open condescendingly, as if he were reminding someone that the sky was blue. "After all, you should know what a sore looser Ash Ketchum is."

Though he was looking straight at Ash, he continued speaking to his grandfather, who was trying to politely edge his way out of the oncoming conflict, as the young trainer rounded on his decrier. As all present expected, Ash lost his cool almost instantly. "Yea, well what do you know, anyway?"

"I'd know best, after all. You've been losing to me your whole life, Ashy-boy," Gary offered with a shrug.

"Why don't you just shut up, Gary! If you remember, it was me who beat you before I left for Sinnoh!" Ash snarled, taking an aggressive step toward the researcher.

"Yea, I remember I got beat by somebody," Gary admitted, looking quite unimpressed, "but it sure wasn't this loser standing here."

Ash felt his fist tighten in response, but Gary's next words cut some of the ire out from underneath him. "The guy that beat me was on his way to being a Pokemon _Master_."

"The guy standing right here, is moping around like a big crybaby_ loser_ over one lousy Tournament loss!" Gary crossed his arms defiantly, only causing more anger to burn its way through the evaporated residue of Ash's patience.

"What makes you think you know so much about it?" Ash crossed his arms in counter and stared indignantly at his rival. Or, rather, Ex-Rival, as he was about to give due clarification. "After all, you're the one who gave up on being a Pokemon Master," he taunted, jabbing Gary in the chest icily, with two fingers, "At least I'm still_ trying!_"

Gary pushed his lips together derisively. "Ash," he batted the hand away, with contemplative dispassion, "I don't expect you to understand what it means to yield to your limitations. You're just not that sort of guy." He placed two fingers of his own against Ash's vest, and bounced them against his collar bone sharply for good measure. "So let me put it to you in a way you can understand..."

Gary made an indicating motion towards him, and spread his other hand and gestured outward. "What you do, Ash, is very hard. Battling competitively is an ever-changing sport that becomes more and more rigorous and intense every single day. It takes something special to make it into the upper echelon of trainers that reserve the right to call themselves Pokemon Masters. Not everyone can do it, because, to a certain extent, you have to be born with the talent required. Some people, no matter how hard they try, will never, _ever_ reach the top. I didn't have what it took, to do that, Ash, plain and simple. I could have kept beating my head against the glass ceiling if I wanted, but there was no sense in being unrealistic."

Ash's hands fell lax to his sides as he listened uncurling his fingers passively, as if to offer some unspoken apology. "I just felt like I could do a lot more as a Researcher. It's something I was born with the talent to do. I mean, why _shouldn't_ I be good at it, it's in my blood! It's not that Researching was there to fall back on, or that being a Trainer was too hard. It was just that I found out I had a passion for something else. It's not that I _gave up_ on those dreams, Ash."

"I just found _new_ ones," he offered as a summary to the dumbfounded trainer.

When Ash did not respond for several more long moments, he continued, "I'm not suggesting you do the same, or anything."

Ash made a face like he was choking. "Well," he began curiously, but then stopped, chastening his confusion with disapproval. "If you're so smart, What do _you_ think I should do?"

Gary blinked, not having expected to offer up an example. Still, it was obvious from Ash's expression that he was really mixed up, and at least grudgingly, wanted guidance. "Well... maybe you should go out, and do some real soul-searching, Ash." He patted his old rival on the shoulder in the friendliest gesture he dared, watching him slip back into his own internal turmoil. As he expected, Ash shrugged his hand away.

Unabated, however, Gary continued his explanation. "If Training still makes you happy, then you really need to get in touch with _why_. And if not, well, then it couldn't hurt you to get out there and find something _new_, but whatever you decide," Gary acknowledged, drawing his hand to his chin, trying to end his advice in something that wasn't just pure speculation, "I think it would be for the best if you decided it on your own."

"I was going to!" Ash roared, but then shook his head in the direction of his feet, his lowering his voice back down to just two steps below enraged. "I mean, it's not like I have to rethink my whole life just because you _say_ so."

"No, I meant," Gary clarified, waving off his misplaced refusal, "by yourself._ Alone_."

The wind now thoroughly ripped from his sails, Ash glanced up from the tile he'd been regarding. "Train solo, you mean? Like how you did?"

"Yea. Like me. All the greatest trainers fly solo. Don't you know anything?" Gary nodded, feeling more comfortable now that the conversation had rolled back into territory he was more comfortable with, namely, himself. "Whether or not you realize it, you've been relying on your friends to bail you out since you _started_ your journey, Ash. In order for a trainer to really understand what he's made of, he has to be able to rely only on himself, and his Pokemon."

Ash's eyes narrowed. "What about all those cheer-leaders you used to have? You never relied on them for _anything_?"

Far into the corner, Tracy and the Professor watched the two rivals glare powerfully at each other, both rather annoyed they had practically been shunted from the room by the abundance of bad vibes, and neither one really willing to do much about it.

* * *

**Later...**

Ash remembered coming here when he was younger; most times, because he'd been upset. When Gary and he had began butting heads regarding the prospect of their upcoming Trainer Licensing, that had happened a lot, though sometimes it had just been when he'd felt like being left alone. Rarely did anyone come out to this part of the beach. The shoreline was rocky, here, and that meant that there was no good swimming or surfing to be had.

He'd liked it then because it had had a deeper meaning to him, he guessed. If you squinted from here, you could see Cinnabar, he knew, and that had seemed so far away and so unreachable to him then, that he could come here and silently replace his anger for Gary with a yearning to escape to that far away place, a yearning for his adventure to begin, and for his life here to draw to a permanent close.

But now he'd been to that place, and places far far beyond it. It wasn't that he was jaded, or that those far away places had held nothing for him, but simply that the phantom promise of adventure could no longer hold his interest, having tasted the real thing. And so now connotations of another kind, that being mostly negative, were all that remained.

He frowned as he watched the waves roll in, one after another, each one crashing over on the shore, losing momentum and receding, just like the one before it. The sea was relatively calm today, although it was overcast. He hoped, for whatever reason, that a storm would roll in. These waves would only ever just lap at the shoreline. When the winds from the south of Cinnabar started whipping, this beach would see five foot crests, he knew. But what difference would it make. The sea could lick away at the shore for the next thousand years, as hard as it liked, and it would still be here, just the same. The waves would still be just as useless against it, and it was just so, so like his own hardship that thinking about it made him feel sick.

He was standing in the surf to his knees, the rolled legs of his jeans darkening with moisture as he stared out into the nearly endless expanse of navy southern sea; the hazy curvature of the distant islands the only interruption of its vast and otherwise undisturbed blue. It, as well as his solitude within it, was somehow both consoling and disconcerting, all at once.

He knew that he felt awful, and he knew that if he truly wanted to let go, to vent, now was the time to do it. He could thrash and rage in the surf and no one would ever know, because there was no one around to see him. No one to watch him have his break down in peace and solidarity.

But at the same time, it forced him to take account of the pointlessness of it all. What good would a bunch of crying and slapping the water, do? It wasn't going to change a thing. Just like the coming storm wouldn't change a thing about this shoreline, no matter how high the waves got. It wasn't going to change the facts that he was eventually going to have to face.

And he seriously doubted that it would make him feel better in any real capacity anyways.

When he'd come here, truthfully, he'd just wanted to be alone in his misery. But then, that wasn't exactly fair, was it? He wasn't the only one who'd lost. While responsibility for it laid solely on his shoulders, this was not something he could exclusively call his own. He looked down at the poke balls at his hip with a variety of emotions, ranging from guilt, to fear. He had not withdrawn any of them, excluding Pikachu who was always out, since leaving the Sinnoh League Castle Colosseum.

But if Pikachu's temperament was any indication of what he was to expect when he did...

The loss had broken him down, that much there was no sense in denying. He was never this sensitive, this upset following one before. He'd taken plenty. Certainly bigger ones. But never one so... so...

Pathetic.

He was better than that, and he absolutely knew it. So losing in spite of making the extra effort beforehand, trying as hard as he ever had to overcome, thinking and fighting to the best of his ability had crippled his fundamental beliefs, both in himself and in his dream.

Indeed, while he'd been vulnerable, even if never to this extent, following many of the losses of his career, Pikachu had ever been his constantly supportive, good-natured companion, ever believing in him and their cooperative ability as partners. Now, it seemed, he was struggling even to maintain the same level of forced civility that he was. What did that say, truly, of the situation? He had something far worse than upset team-mates on his hands. He had some explaining to do.

He looked down at his partner, who looked back quizzically, engaging him with dark eyes that were filled with the same thing he was sure that his were filled with. Confusion. Regret. Disillusionment. After all, Pikachu had been there with him. Had heard everything that Gary said.

That he had for the most part, overlooked that, ignored it, just for the sake of concentrating on concealing and seeking to soothe his own frustrations, filled him with an immense shame. One that he could not shrug off, or ignore. This, more than anything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, told him that he was nowhere near the caliber of trainer he'd imagined himself to be.

The other things, those were open to judgment, to speculation. But Ash had known from the jump, told himself since he'd first encountered it and believed every single day of his journey; without exception, a trainer that would ignore his own Pokemon, especially when they were suffering, was the lowest of the low. He'd forgotten that in his own anger, and that was not a good enough excuse.

He retracted all the balls from his belt and clutched them between his fingers, eying them as he took a deep breath, and turned away from the open sea, to toss them up onto the shore.

The poke balls burst open, depositing his team and returning to him. He breathed slowly, feeling his lip quiver as he affixed them back to his belt. He looked up slowly. Torterra. Infernape. Starraptor. Buizel. He looked around. He thought he'd forgotten Gible until he heard and felt a steady munching on his hat. He reached up and appropriated the dragon type, placing him on the ground with a patient but tired extrication maneuver practiced many times now.

He looked at all of them and heaved a sigh, now feeling quite defeated. He could not read much from their stares, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to. He tore his eyes away and instead fixed them on the wet stand in front of him, at the line where the waves reached their fruitless climax upon the shore.

"We didn't make it," he acknowledged quietly.

He kept his head lowered, pulled it's bill way down over his eyes.

"And the reason why, is," he hesitated for a moment before steeling his resolve. He made a concentrating gesture out in front of himself. "The reason why is because I'm not as good as I thought I was." He shook his head resolutely, "I'm not as good as I pretended to be."

"We all wanted to win and I know all of you worked hard for it. I'm not disappointed in any of you, but..." he gripped his hands tightly at his side, "I'm the one who said we'd make it. I'm the one who has to make good on that. I made a promise to you all that I couldn't deliver. So I'm asking you not to feel too badly about it." He knew that he didn't wish for any of his friends to blame themselves. He would shoulder this responsibility, because that was what was fair. They all held an equal share in the outcome, but HE was the leader. And a good leader always bore the blame.

"I guess I'd be lying if I said I wasn't angry," he continued, softly, letting go of an exhale, "but it's just that I'm angry at myself."

"I owed it to all of you to hold up my end and I failed you. We lost because of me," he specified, "...plain and simple."

At their collective cries, he continued briskly, "Believe me, I wish it was easier to feel like a loser. I wish I could just give up, and stop trying sometimes, so maybe it wouldn't hurt so much- but I can't. I wish everything wasn't so stacked against me- but it is." He swallowed, thinking back on what Gary said. "I wish I'd have been born with natural talent..."

He looked what should have been his championship team in the face, and sized up their expressions. "But I wasn't."

"But, that doesn't mean I'm going to let it go at this." He looked at each of them in turn, his face carved in granite, every fiber of him striving the hardened self-disciplinarian he knew he had to become. "Doing my best. Giving my all. Apparently those things aren't good enough, and so I don't have any _choice_ but to try harder."

That didn't say much for their losses suffered, and he knew it. Buizel was the first to cast his look of dissatisfaction. Buizel, perhaps even more than all the others was, like him, a strong competitor. He loved to win, and hated to lose.

"I know you're disappointed," he offered the water type, shaking his head to suggest that there was more to it, "and, looking back, I know that you probably aren't the only one. There are other Pokemon, other teams that I didn't take as far as I should have, and I want to fix that. For you, and for all of them. So I'm just asking for one last shot." He turned away and faced out to the ocean. He held a single finger into the air.

"One more try, one more crack at it. One more year. This time I won't just try gain, or work harder, or do better..." he began, curling his extended finger back into a fist, and bringing it down into his opposing palm. "This time I do it. This time I take it all the way, and this time we win."

"I'm relying on you guys to help me make this happen." He grit his teeth with the knowledge that he was following the advice of someone who he'd only just very recently began to tolerate again, much less take words of wisdom from. "...Because this time it's just going to be you and me."

He turned back to look at his team. "And if I can't... If we don't..." he bit his lip, "Well..."

"I don't know what happens then." He was lying, of course. It was pretty obvious what would happen then. No matter how much Gary wanted to sugar-coat his own short-comings, to Ash, the answer was plain to see:

He would have to give up on his dream.

* * *

"Everything went well, then?" Holiday's whisper beside him caught the Admin off guard, as he regarded the bomb-squad and patrol officers that clouded the main thoroughfare of Route 1 out ahead of him.

"Like hell. You didn't tell me this place was gonna be swarming with Jennies!" Doc grimaced. Holiday had left him here for close to two hours as the officers swarmed the area, leaving him high and dry. Seeing his partner's face now didn't exactly thrill him.

Holiday only held out his hand for the 'gear. When Doc thrust it back into his hands and watched as his partner inspected it intensely for a moment, regarding the group out in front of them, he regretted it. Doc didn't like the look in his eye at all. The anger he felt was replaced by a sick horror as Holiday seemed to be sinisterly aware of the fact that he held absolute power. That he could essentially take the lives of some 60 people, with every loose end tied up, and only a short walk through the brush the only thing between him and walking away scot-free.

So naturally, Doc was relieved when Holiday slipped the gear back into his pocket, watching with intensity as the three Rockets were stuffed into the back of a patrol-car, before jerking his head to the side. "Lets get the fuck out of here."

As Doc followed his partner quietly out of their vantage and back toward town, failing to work up his anger back up in light of the sudden scare, he instead contemplated what had occurred. As he watched his partner withdraw his 'gear once they made it back into town, presumably for the purpose of contacting their employer to check in, it became quite obvious to him that Holiday was good at playing the game of deception. Doc hoped to never let himself fall victim to it.

"Yea boss." The taller of the two Nebula agents said flatly. "Everything worked out." Doc noticed he didn't bother describing the round-about nature in which it actually had, only that it had. Everything else was details better omitted.

Doc plastered on a neutral look when the other Admin snapped the gear shut and turned to face him after a moment, walking backward so as to avoid forestalling their progress back into town.

"Boss has something that needs taken care of, while we wait for a lead."

* * *

Ash had not cried all day, nor had he cried yesterday when his loss had actually occurred. As his Pokemon had surrounded him there on the beach, and embraced him, in claw and wing and paw and in Gibble's case tooth, to offer their support and absolution, he'd still managed to keep it together, even if just barely. So why was it that as soon as he'd come through the door, and found his mother waiting for him, with a stern expression that she had obviously been preparing for his eventual return, that he suddenly burst into tears?

He didn't see that her expression softened as he immediately brought his hands to shield his face, and let go of a long warbling groan of emotion, that ended in a hiccup. He ducked his head and moved towards her, throwing himself at the mercy of the court. Pikachu wisely made himself scarce.

"Ash?" She started, the tone of her voice sounding nothing like he expected her to, "what's wrong?"

He felt a monstrous knot of guilt that he'd earlier mistaken for anger at his mother, instead reveal itself as shame for having rebuked her. He was ashamed of the way he'd spoken to her and told her unwillingly that that was what he feared most, as his mouth got away from him in a fit of outpouring emotion. "Don't be ashamed of me," he pleaded, even though he knew it sounded insane.

"Oh Sweetie, how could I ever be?" she gasped as she stood and reached out tenderly to him, in his approach, threading her fingers into his hair, and angling his head so that his chin remained elevated. "I could never be ashamed of you, Ash! You're everything a mother could ever ask for in a son."

When he did not brighten, she pressed the matter. "There's something bothering you, honey. It's more than just this Sinnoh League thing."

Mothers always knew best, after all, and his was hardly an exception to the matter. It was immensely relieving to heard the words come from his mother. To feel the reassurance only she was able to provide. He leaned against her, and embraced her openly, as she continued to clutch his face, forcing him to look directly at her. "It's just..." he struggled, as the tears he'd tried so hard to shut out over the last twenty-four hours came back with a vengeance, forcing him to stare at his mother through twin puddles of slowly-accruing moisture, "I don't know what do anymore, Mom."

Before she could interrupt him, the words came flooding out on the leading edge of another sob. "I worked hard. Really hard... and I still lost to someone who'd never fought a battle before in their life!" He felt his lips shake, and had to resist what would have been a futile urge to look away from his mother, then. "Its not like before. I've lost when it mattered, but not like this. I don't even know if I'm cut out for this anymore. But that just makes it feel worse."

He stared hard at his mother, his sorrow amplifying his voice to such a point that he felt he must have been half-screaming into his mothers face, as a wracking sob got the better of him. "I don't want to give up! But I also don't know if I wouldn't be happier doing something else! But even then, I don't even know what else to do with my life!"

"Ash, relax." She stroked him gently, and wiped a thumb across his cheek. "Don't talk like this, sweetie. You've got your whole life to decide that. Nobody your age knows exactly what it is they want out of life. You haven't let anyone down, Ash. Especially me."

"I-" he hiccuped, regaining some control over himself, an realizing how crazy he sounded, "I know that. I just-" again back-pressure in his chest forced him to let go of another sob, "I feel like I let ME down."

Delia's face contorted slightly as she held her son. It was easy to see his agony. More than she had ever seen the expression from her son, it was plain across every feature. This loss, for whatever reason, had scathed him deeply. Dug a trench in his heart that would take time to fill, no matter what she said. It was hard as a Mother to admit that she could not provide what her baby boy needed.

"Ash," she spoke in earnest, "I know it hurts." She wrapped her arms around his head, pulling him fully against her, and was hard-pressed not to shed tears of her own as she felt him take in handfuls of her apron and bawl uninhibited into her chest.

"But tomorrow is going to be a new day," she continued, overtop of what was practically muffled screams of anger and sorrow, "and tomorrow, even if it's just by a little, this will hurt less than it did today, and the day after that, it will hurt even less." She rubbed his back, gently, feeling him shudder and then let out another sob. "Your heart just needs time to get itself back on track, baby."

"What's important, is that you don't let it crush you in the mean-time." She paused and pulled him away as she felt him calm, bracing him lovingly by his arms. "I can't tell you what will make you happy, Ash, but no matter what it is, I'll still be proud of you when you find it."

"You may have gotten your brains from your father, and your talent from me, but you've got a good heart, which is more important than either of those things. As long as you don't let that heart of yours give up, I will always, ALWAYS be proud of you." She smiled awkwardly down at him, and he returned a humored contortion of his face that looked more like a grimace than anything but she was able to read it as her mark hitting home. Pleased with that, she let her smile become a slightly more earnest one.

"I'm sorry." He remarked suddenly, letting his head hang and stealing the brevity of the moment, though in truth, trying not to let the injected irony of her words make him laugh. He was afraid he'd snot all over himself.

"For what, sweetheart?" she questioned instantly, lifting his chin again so that he would look her in the eye, "there's nothing for you to be sorry about."

He wiped his face and sniffed a bit, before trying to look firm. "It's just that didn't really mean to start crying again."

She turned her head and curled her lips a bit, her smile returning. This was to be expected, she supposed. Ash was getting to be that age where he was expecting to meet certain conventional standards of manhood. Nobody had ever told him it was not okay to cry when he was a child, but Ash always seemed to want to keep a stiff upper lip about everything if he could in spite of that. Now, with adulthood just on the horizon, she imagined that that desire had lessened little. She had faith that her son would come around all on his own. But, she thought, it was always nice to have some help.

"I know just what'll cheer you up." She patted his shoulders, and then rubbed the side of his face again. "Have you called your friends, yet?"

"No," He shook his head. "I don't really know what to tell them."

"Just tell them you're okay." She reassured him. "I'm sure that's all they want to know. Whatever you decide about going back to Sinnoh is your choice, Honey. They'll understand."

He doubted that. He had more than a sneaking suspicion that they, like he, had he been in their shoes, would feel a little betrayed by his disappearance. It was partly because he was not sure what to say, that he'd not contacted them, that was true. More than that it was because he felt intensely guilty for what he'd done. And probably even more so for what he would have to tell them when he did: What had been on his mind about training solo. He still wasn't sure it was going to help and he definitely wasn't sure he was prepared, but, he knew it was what he had to do, even if it wasn't _exactly_ the right thing to do by them.

"Then while you're doing that, I'll put together the little gift I was going to save for when you left again. I think I could stand to let you have it now."

He smiled hard and nodded. There was no getting out of it he supposed. Now was as good a time as any. Dutifully he trudged upstairs to get on his PC.

* * *

The sight of Dawn waking him up was crushing disappointment enough, he thought. He didn't need the promise of sleep revoked as well. He pulled his cover over his head, and muttered more to himself than anything; "You should be Nurse Joy."

He thought hard for a second, as Dawn fought against the cover to rouse him and found that there was a ache in his stomach, a byproduct of not eating since yesterday morning. "...With a big plate of pancakes," he concluded, trying to work his face into the pillow. "Don't come back till you are," he finished, nonsensically.

"Ugh, Get up!" Dawn cried, finally frustrated with trying to gently nudge Brock awake, and pulling the pillow out from under his head.

As Brock's head hit the pillow, he let out a groan, now forced completely into reality. "What time is it?"

"4 AM," Dawn replied, rubbing her eyes. "There's a phone call for us down in the lobby."

Brock sat up as quickly as he dared and wiped his face, as she made to leave. Compliantly he jammed his foot into his wayward shoe and followed her. When they descended the stairs, there was a lone videophone in the row typically used for trainers to make outside calls that was on, and on its screen there was a blue and white animatic, depicting a coin sliding into a receptacle slot that read '**Overseas call. Will you accept the charges?**' Below it were green red buttons with tiny drop-shadows to suggest they were actually protruding from the screen, winking impatiently for a selection to be made.

Both of them knew the call had to be coming from Kanto and neither of them particularly wanted to be the one to accept the call. Brock did a double-take, but Dawn beat him to the punch. "What should we tell her?"

Not having much to offer on the point, Brock shrugged. "The truth, I guess."

She knit her fingers nervously in front of her, and Brock reached out to pat her shoulder, as he extended his other arm to tap the button. "You're sure Ash's mom isn't going to murder us and hide the bodies in her garden?"

"I'm sure," he said, shaking his head. He noticed that her look didn't seem very reassured, and upon swallowing the lump in his throat, suddenly neither did he.

Thousands of miles away, Ash sat at his desk, tension building as the '**Establishing Connection**' faded away to a black screen. When it finally gave way to a compressed image of the inside of a a dimly-lit Pokemon Center lobby, and the stunned faces of his two friends, he faltered for a moment.

"Hey," he acknowledged quietly. Seemingly too surprised to say much at all, his two companions looked back at him with gauging expressions. After a a few seconds passed, whatever uneasiness that had held their tongues passed.

"Hey," Dawn said first, mirroring his greeting, her tone sardonic, giving rise to his initial fears. The word had an expectant quality to it. As if it were to be followed up uncompromisingly with "What's your excuse? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Hey." Brock's repetition seemed much less icy, which, he supposed, was to be expected. Brock was always pretty tolerant. He guessed it came from being the oldest. Still, he could tell there was a little bit of something saline behind his friends voice.

Expecting this, he sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, starting at his forehead and ending with his lips pinched together in a closed palm, before beginning his apology. "I'm really sorry I left without telling you guys. I didn't have my head screwed on straight, but that's not an excuse for ditching you." Sincere, and to the point, he reminded himself.

"Hey, Ash, we're just glad you're okay," Brock explained, waving both of his hands in front of the camera dismissively, the slightest hint of offense now missing from his voice.

Dawn, evidently much harder won, snorted. "Yea, With your sense of direction we were sure you'd be hopelessly lost." The snipe earned her a disapproving look from Brock, who turned to counter it with a soft word, but, Ash was already speaking across the trans-continental time-delay.

"That's a big vote of confidence, thanks," Ash muttered, apathetically. No sense in getting angry, since he hadn't expected much better.

"Any time," Dawn snipped, earning herself a terse elbow this time, by Brock, who again tried to intervene, but was cut off.

"That's actually the second reason I called," Ash continued in spite of her, pushing the rest of what he'd intended to say through, even though Dawn didn't seem to want to hear it. "Dawn, I should have told you before I left:" he paused, but only for just a split second, knowing she would cut across him if he waited too long, "You're a really good coordinator and I'm glad I got to watch you improve and grow, into such a great trainer. It takes a lot of talent and skill to do what you did, making it all the way to the finals in your very first Regional Festival, so don't ever sell yourself short for it. You should be very proud of yourself. I think you'll do even better next year, and I wanted to wish you luck."

She looked surprised, but still tried to regard him nonchalantly, attempting to make it obvious that his words only meant so much. He shook his head. "I mean it, Dawn. I'm sure you'll do very well."

She softened a bit, at that, and looked at the camera with more than a little melancholy. Also, perhaps a bit of shame over trying to snub him. He wasn't exactly sure, but it was a marked improvement. "...Thanks, Ash." Her smile made him smile infectiously, and came as a great relief. "S-sorry." She managed, finally.

Brock however, was quick to interrupt this time, not wanting to be interrupted a third time. "Wait, what do you mean, Ash?" He crowded Dawn out of the screen, as he questioned the young, wayward trainer. "You could take the ferry and meet us back here in a couple of days," Brock reasoned, knowingly.

The Breeder and Coordinator were both forced to look on grimly as Ash lowered his head. "I'm not coming back to Sinnoh, guys," he said calmly, patting a hand gently on his leg. "That's the third reason I called."

"This is were we part ways," he explained, his placidity wavering in spite of strong resolve. "From here on out, I've decided to train solo."

"Woah," Brock uttered, "you serious, Ash?"

He could literally feel the confusion give way to a sudden quiet tension so visceral he could barely continue."We might not see each other again for a while, actually." Looking now to the two of them for the first time, he could see Rocks bewildered, and slightly hurt expression. Beside him, he could see Dawn ostensibly collapse. "Please don't take it personally, alright. It's not because of anything you guys did."

He decided he really didn't want to look at the camera anymore, and when he looked away, to pick at some knotted part of the wooden table, there were several long moments of silence.

"This is goodbye then," he heard Dawn ask, her voice quiet, "for good?"

He didn't exactly mean it that way. At least not in the sense that he was going to avoid them simply for the sake of never seeing their faces again. But, he supposed that that was essentially what it would amount to. After all, Dawn lived in Sinnoh, and that wasn't exactly just down the street. He didn't know what to say. Wouldn't they still be friends? It wasn't like he was just going to forget she'd ever existed! He stammered, but nothing came of it. Instead, he shook his head without clarification.

Brock cleared his throat. "Are you sure you don't want to sleep on this, Ash?"

Again, he shook his head, this time more promptly. He didn't know how to respond to that either, with any specificity, only to say that he did not. His decision was made, and the more they tried to insist otherwise, the more firm the decision would be. If it was stubborn or selfish, they would just have to live with it.

Neither party quite knowing what to say, Ash drew the conversation to a close, with haste, having never wanted to begin it in the first place. "I have to go."

No longer wanting to worry about it, he shut off the computer and stood, leaving the room with as much impatience as he'd entered it. He just didn't want to think about it right now. He wanted to be over this hurdle before he let that trip him up, and so he decided to just block it out for the time being. It was another weight on this shoulders, but when his feet touched the baseboard of the stairs, he could feel the almost unwelcome sensation of a smile stressing the tightened muscles of his swollen eyes.

"W-" He lost his breath for a moment and all the sadness and disappointment was shunted away for the time being, as he looked at what was in front of him. "Wow, Mom!"

"Do you like it?" She grinned, happily, already knowing the answer from his expression. She held it up plainly in front of her. It was a Commemorative League Jacket! The kind they used to give out Gym Leaders and League Officials. "I made it myself. I had to look at a lot of your Dad's old photographs to get it just right."

Ash sobered a bit at the mention of his father but nodded emphatically. It reminded him of the jacket he'd worn back during his first trip through Kanto and Johto in the way it was put together, except it was crimson instead of blue and the sleeves were just a bit longer. The material was heavier, but not so thick that it felt like a coat, and it had poke ball symbols embroidered into the shoulders along with the stylized league 'L' sewn into the left lapel in gold. He thought it looked much sharper than his old jacket.

He grinned brightly but she produced yet more. A backpack that was as red as his jacket was thrust into his arms. "Go upstairs and try it all on. I want to see you in it!" She clapped her hands together pleasantly.

He did as he was told and took the stairs two at a time up to his room, emptying the backpack out onto his bed. There was a new set of jeans that were darker and slimmer than what he was used to and a black hooded sweatshirt with tiny letters 'PKMN' embroidered into it in white over the left breast, among some of the more mundane items that his mom usually gave him; clean underwear as usual.

There were new shoes too, he found, as he felt the residual weight of the bag which came as a pleasant surprise. His current set had seen a lot of mileage and were beginning to come apart at the heel, in spite of his mothers peerless craftsmanship. Besides, they were getting a little too small. They were pretty much simple white hi-tops, with the same poke ball symbol on the heel and over the Velcro strap at the top, but he found that he really liked how crisp they looked in contrast to the rest of his attire.

He patted the backpack testingly, to see if there was more. Sure enough, a small bulge in one of the side pockets produced something that, to a certain extent, was a bigger change of pace than all the rest of it.

Peeling off the fingerless gloves that had long been his standard, he slipped on the new coverings with testing uncertainty. They were athletic gloves that had tiny little holes in the white leather palms and red padding on the back for his knuckles. They made his hands look pretty big, he noticed, making a claw-like motion in front of himself as though he was gripping a poke ball that was not really there. He expected them to feel bulky and uncomfortable but to the opposite effect they were fairly sheer, while being stiff and sturdy enough that they didn't slide around on his hand. Their fit, like everything else his mother had made for him, was perfect.

He looked at himself in the mirror and put on his best estimation of a fierce look which really would have looked pathetic to anyone else, he imagined, since his face was still puffy and red. He may not have looked the part but the new threads really made him feel like a million pokedollars. He admired himself for a bit longer, before frowning. There was something missing.

His hat. He pulled off his red and blue cap. This would no longer do. He set it on his desk and went to dig in his closet, coming up for air in the subsequent avalanche of junk, clinging to his old Indigo League hat like a buoy. After extricating himself and resealing the tomb of his bygone belongings with much shoving and grunting, he batted the cap out of it's compressed state and bent the bill back into shape. When he laid it on his head, he took another look at himself and grinned. That was more like it. Even Pikachu, whom he hadn't noticed earlier asleep on his bed, cracked an eye open and gave him a thumbs up. He wrestled the backpack onto his shoulders and headed back downstairs.

If he had taken the steps two at a time one the way up, he took them five at a time on the way down. When he reached the bottom, he stood plainly before his mother and displayed himself in a full rotation. She tutted, to his surprise, as she approached.

"Well, I was hoping I could get you to give the hat up, Ash! You have such nice hair." She peeled off his cap and tried to gently toss it aside but he held stubbornly on to it and kept it pressed to his chest instead, though he kept it off his head for now, to appease her. "See? You look so handsome," she mused, diligently straightening his hair, patting down his collar and rolling the hood of his sweatshirt. "How will you ever keep all the girls away?" she gushed at her sons respondent blush.

"Mom!" He complained, struggling to maintain his roguish appearance in spite of his mother's efforts. He rubbed a hand into his hair and shrugged his shoulders some to loosen the tightness of his neck. When he looked up at her again, he bit back any further insult at the sight of the tears in her eyes. "Mom? What's wrong?"

"Oh!" She heaved a breath, as she patted him gently on both arms. "It's nothing." She cracked a crooked, wavering smile. "You remind me more and more of your father every time you come home, you know?" she finally admitted, sucking in her bottom lip, and blinking rapidly.

"Mom," He began, reaching out and grabbing hold of her sleeves. He wanted to say something consoling. Something strong and brave but, realizing he didn't really know how to console the person who had spent her life consoling him, just told her what he felt presently. "I appreciate... this... Everything." He was fumbling, he knew, but he meant it. Still, it didn't seem quite complete. It wasn't just about right now. This was just one of many times she'd been there for him. He remembered those times too. "...Everything you've ever done for me." He felt his eyes sting again but he scrunched them tight. "I love you, Mom."

"Ohh, sweetheart!" When she collided with him, he felt like he'd been hit by the Magnet Train. He was pretty convinced she was under the impression that hugging someone was supposed to be a contest of strength and stamina, though, while it was uncompromisingly tight and almost awkwardly lengthy, he was reminded of the very important qualities it held. No one would ever be able to hug him like his mother did and that was certain. He hooked his hands behind her back and felt leather stick to leather as he locked his wrists and squeezed back just as intensely, for as long as he could manage. He felt her give a short squeal of comfort, before they released each other.

He took in a much-needed gulp of air, as she wiped her eyes. "I also have something else for you." She ushered him back into the kitchen and sat him at the table, before darting across the room to the cupboard and retrieving a black and white box from it.

When he opened it, he looked at the gleaming new device in his hands. "This is one of the new 3.0 'Gears! These aren't even out here, yet!" He flipped it open and looked interestedly at the two touch-screens. "Seriously, Brock's PokeGear isn't even this nice! How did you get this?"

She tapped two fingers together, almost hesitant to admit her secret. "Well, I've been setting aside a little bit every time you've sent home money for me to hold on to for you." In truth, it was Ash's own money that'd paid for it. "...for a while now."

"Mom!" Ash shouted, looking up from the PokeGear, and taking up an accusative tone. He softened when he saw her slightly bothered expression. "That money I send home is supposed to be for you." He watched her roll her eyes, before his attention was sucked back to the small device, and she laughed. He certainly didn't seem to be feeling any buyer's remorse over the purchase.

"Well, I thought you might like it, just the same." She conceded, thankful that the gift was too distracting for him to scold her over it. He didn't respond with a positive or negative to that notion however.

After a while of watching him tap vigorously and squint at the small device, she cleared her throat.

"Ash." There was no response. She sighed. She was well aware of the fact that gadgets like these sucked up the attention-spans of young people.

"Sweetheart." She insisted a little more clearly.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Still nothing.

"Ash Ketchum!" She elevated her voice, startling him so bad that he lost his grip on the PokeGear and boggled it about for an agonizingly long second, before getting a solid grip at the full extension of his fingertips. Catching a glimpse of her irritated expression, he quickly sat it to his distant left, snapped it shut and looked at her with the same frozen, wide-eyed expression he'd taken up when she'd shouted his full name earlier that day.

"Yes, Mom?" he asked, innocently.

"I wanted to ask you," she began pointedly, but somewhat seemed to lose steam after that. "When were you planning to..." She looked a little sad, he noticed, as she spun her hands in an attempt to get out the entirety of her question. He already knew what she was going to say. "...Leave?" The fragility of her final word made Ash feel a little hesitant to admit how soon he'd actually intended to head out. But he knew what it meant for both of them. It was written all across his mother's face.

Delia was trying to look brave. Not distant, but entirely passive. Like a friend who waves goodbye to someone expected to be seen again at the same time the next day. It wasn't the truth, but it was the face she had to put on. It was necessary. It wasn't comfortable, but anything like what she wanted to do would have seemed too much like discouragement. It was his life, and he needed to get out there and live it. Especially with all this confusion in his heart. She couldn't let herself get in his way, even if all she wanted to do was clutch him tight and never let him go. As his mother, what she wanted had to come second to what he needed and she had come to understand that since he'd turned ten, even if she didn't like it.

Ash heaved a breath and shrugged, somberly. "Probably soon." He looked out the window. He felt like it would have been a good idea to leave tonight, to get his feet on the road before he lost his nerve about traveling alone but there wasn't much light left. He wouldn't make it very far out of Pallet, so there wasn't much point to it. "Tomorrow, I think," he said, omitting his true intentions.

She didn't make it evident to him how much she disliked that news, and he pretended he didn't notice that she was hiding it. It worked out that way, just like it always had.

* * *

Jessie and James both sat very upright in their collapsible metal chairs, and Meowth sat in James' lap with absolutely none of his typical panache. The thoughts in their heads were swirling too rapidly for that, trying to deconstruct the situation in such a way that it explained what had led to this. There was almost no answer. Nobody was telling them what they'd been charged with, or how long they were going to be held. Their obligatory phone call earlier had been to the Boss, just out of sheer desperation, but whatever it was that was happening was so hot that they had been deflected down to a lower-level administrator who would only talk in soft muffled tones and told them that the organization couldn't afford to know them right now, and that someone would see to them, once the matter had blown over. In the mean-time, they were not to say anything.

In front of them, a particularly disheveled looking plain-clothes officer, had entered the room after a short reprieve and slung her leather jacket over the back of her chair with a casual air, revealing a somewhat larger caliber handgun strapped beneath her arm than was the norm. Her predecessor had been much less enthusiastic leaving the room than she had been upon entering, and Jessie wondered what she had been told by her superiors before entering. Though physically, this officer appeared identical to the others, she was somehow different, Jessie could tell, but just how, she couldn't be sure.

"My name," the woman began, digging in the pockets of her jeans and producing her badge which she threw onto the table, along with a pack of cigarettes, and a flip-open lighter, "is Detective Penny."

Jessie blinked, and saw James turn to regard her. She recognized the name, and it was obvious that James did as well, but they dared not communicate that, or anything else without legal council present, just as they had been instructed.

"And I," she continued, tipping her seat at the opposite end of the table, spinning it and straddling it backwards, before lifting the last of the two items she'd discarded and putting them to use, "am now the agent assigned to this case."

When they did not say anything, she shrugged, and took a long drag from the menthol cigarette in her mouth, letting it dangle at the edge of her lip rather than retracting it, to exhale fumes at them across the table. "Not talking, huh?"

She regarded each of them in turn, eying their clothing, and their facial expressions, with poorly veiled contempt. "I'll be honest with you," she offered, "I don't care too much for you Rocket scumbags."

She cracked a fearsome grin, before pursing her lips to take another pull off her cigarette. "Ever since your Boss went into hiding and the Chiefs blackballed my case against your organization, well..." She set a hand on the table and curled it into a fist so tight that all of her knuckles popped audibly. "I've been feeling a little jaded."

The cloud of smoke that hung around her now, seemed ominous indeed, as the trio was suddenly very aware of her identity, and very afraid of it.

"This case doesn't necessarily have much to do with that." Her smile came easy again, when she exhaled through her teeth. "...but It's nice to now that I won't be roughing up anyone who didn't already have it coming."

She ashed out her cigarette on the table with very little concern for their incredulous looks. "So do you want to tell me what your connection to the Pokemon Liberation Front is, or should I skip right to the fun part?"

* * *

When the next day rolled around, he'd kept it simple, sure. That was really the only way he was going to be able to get away without having to get involved in some full-circle water-works, as he parted ways with his mother. A hug, a wave, a couple words and he left. Singular drive, determinant focus. Not until he stood on the hilltop that overlooked his home town, did he turn around.

The sun was still breaking and the town was very quiet. No ten-year-olds were getting their starters today. This was just his journey. He imagined easily that the town would look just like this, when he got home. Nothing here ever changed and that was just the way it was. When he was younger, it had driven him crazy. Pallet was on it's own time, it's own schedule, and the rest of Kanto could, and would, carry on without it. The only thing even remotely interesting there had ever been here, was Oak's research center.

Yesterday, the same things had been on his mind and today, even with a considerable deal of weight lifted from him, his thoughts had changed little. But, it was funny how when you put your back to something, you could always appreciate it more. This place would always be here and it would always have the same things. It still couldn't hold someone like him forever, but it would always be home.

Simple, Beautiful... and Boring.

He laughed at the thought, as he turned toward the oft-traveled footpath of Route 1 that cut it's way to Viridian, and looked down at his partner, who was walking easily at this side.

"Hey," he began, adopting a challenging look, "I'll race you to end!" He pointed out in front of himself in the direction of Viridian City, and grinned.

"Last one there is a rotten Exeggcute-" he began to taunt, but Pikachu had already bolted.

"Hey! I wasn't ready!"

From the tall grass, a psychic Pokemon not native to Kanto took notice of the two dashing friends, and identified them readily as the ones it had been sent to look for. The Gardevoir sat, meditated, and prepared to relay the information, sending a telepathic message half a world away.

* * *

A/N: Every bit of Ash/Delia in this fic is dedicated to and inspired by my friend **Aiselne Phoenix Nocturnus**. She's great, and her fics are great. Period. Even if you hate this, read her stuff!

With this chapter, consider the fic officially kicked off/opened/begun. Updates'll be pretty slow from here on out, because I don't write or edit very quickly, (or with any real capacity, for that matter) not to mention I work and go to school full time, so I don't really want to give them a timeframe, either. Just don't expect the fic to explode overnight, is all I'm saying.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I hope you'll follow and enjoy what comes next.

(Ah! Accidentally posted an unedited version of this chapter! Hope this is better.)


	3. Chapter III

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon. Mark's introductory scene was originally drafted by a friend of mine, who'll we'll just refer to as KJ, at this point.

Summary: Team Nebula tries their hand in the retail business and Ash forges ahead into adventures unknown, whilst Brock and Dawn plot with a_ certain someone_ to ensure his return. What is Looker doing in Viridian City?

A/N: Sorry, but still no beta. I'm still trying, and I'll just keep on editing as best I can in the meantime. The next few chapters after this _should_ come along faster (since they're mostly complete) than this one did.

* * *

**PKMN2K10 **

**Chapter III**

"The Quick & Dirty"

"Left at the next light."

Doc nodded, glancing over just momentarily at his partner in the passenger seat. "So what's this all about anyways?"

"Apparently our guys have been trying to make headway pushing this stuff here for a couple of months now, with no results. Security in this town is tight, and all the normal modes of distribution are so highly monitored that when we tried to feel out the market, we tipped our hand to the authorities, so we've had to lay low for a while." Holiday, said with a shrug.

Doc nodded, as he performed a rolling stop at a four-way intersection. It seemed simple enough.

"Boss ordered us to take over here for the time being." Holiday thrust a thumb over his shoulder indicated the rear compartment of the truck. "Take all the back-stock, and bump ahead progress-"

The muscular admin felt his eyebrows slam together. There was a lot of things that he was capable of, but he just couldn't see himself succeeding, in what he supposed would be a few days before they got a lock on the kid again, where Team Nebula grunts with vastly more experience and know-how in this particular field had been failing for months. The fact that he'd just been told he was driving around a truckload of illegal supplements did little to ease his mind, either, and that was just aside from his own personal feelings of uncertainty and distaste."How exactly does he expect us to do that?"

"He didn't specify," Holiday said with an uncaring sigh, as though it were all the same as him. "Just that we're supposed to-"

"Well then I suppose you've got a brilliant plan? I thought we were just gonna rough a few guys up, get the water flowing, 'ya know? Not actually push the goods; you're the criminal, bro. I just work here." Doc said, as he flipped the turn signal, eased onto the gas and pulled the truck out into the intersection, working hand over hand against the power steering to put the large vehicle into a left-hand turn. His driving became very disciplined and by the numbers, now that he was aware what he was courier to. Getting pulled over now would be catastrophic, of course.

"You know," Holiday hissed, more annoyed with Doc it seemed, than the situation. "If you just waited, instead of bombarding me with questions, you'd get the same answer and look a lot less like an idiot." He clasped the bridge his nose between two gloved fingertips, and shook his head. He supposed, that it was very fortunate for Doc that he did have such a plan.

"This guy." Holiday finally said, after grumbling for a few moments, prodding open the glove compartment and producing from it a newly printed photograph. Doc held it between his thumb and forefinger, at the top of the wheel, once he had straightened the unwieldy cargo truck out and pointed it straight ahead down the thoroughfare, so as to inspect it whilst still giving the road it's due attention.

There was a man in his early thirties, average height and build, curly brown hair, dark eyes, and a salesman's smile. He handed it back and opened his mouth to glean a little more information, but Holiday groaned across him before his mouth could even form the 'wh' sound.

"Just drive, okay, I'll explain everything once we get there."

* * *

It was mid-day when Ash stumbled into Viridian. He didn't remember the trip being quite so long, but he supposed that was probably because, the first time, he'd taken a fair deal of it on the current, and the remainder on a bike. He'd given up on running some time ago and spent a few minutes heaving and panting before trudging on. Pikachu seemed relatively unphased. Now that he could see the city in front of him, he let go of a stretch, and feeling the residual soreness of his legs, was glad that he had not pushed his luck. He was in relatively good shape probably startlingly so, but the distance between his hometown and true civilization would test the mettle of even the most serious runner he guessed. That, and in an effort to beat out Pikachu, he had paced himself rather poorly. His Pokemon partner dashed a small circle around him tauntingly, and Ash stuck out his tongue.

He was thankful that their trip had come with almost none of their previous mishaps, or at least, none which involved Spearow. There had been a few double-backs and what-have-you due to his less than admirable navigation skills, but since Route 1 was pretty much a straight shot, he figured it was pretty much impossible not to wind up here at some point. Though he had hoped to make the trip in less than two hours, It had taken closer to six. Still, he'd almost halved his best time to date and beaten his father by almost a day, from what he remembered his mom telling him the first time around. Something had told him then that the achievement wasn't something to be exceedingly proud of, but he wasn't going to knock it, either way. Instead, he direction his attention to the matter at hand, and what they were going to do.

"Are you ready for this, pal?" he asked Pikachu, glancing ahead into the dense metropolitan center, as they walked.

"Pika," his partner responded, almost offhandedly in light of Ash's seriousness. "Pika pi?" he asked in counter, eyeballing his trainer with scrutiny.

"I hope s-" Ash began, starting to give his friend a casual nod, but then he seemed to remember something and shook his head. "Actually..."

The trainer pointed a white leather-sheathed finger at Pikachu, as his eyes narrowed scornfully. "I already _told_ you that we were going all the way this year. So _of course_ I'm ready." He poked his friend accusingly in the nose. "Trying to psych me out already, huh?"

Pikachu gave him a little zap, rolled his eyes, and turned to continue on their course, leaving Ash standing in exaggerated pose on the sidewalk, waggling the feeling back into his fingertip. Ash Ketchum would not be so easily deterred however. He sprinted the gap, leapt and turned midair, to confront his partner as he came back to the ground in front of him. Of course, he fell flat on his ass, but he didn't let that stop him either.

"I mean it," he promised, now seated in front of his Pokemon. "You and me, we're gonna lead this team to victory, or we're gonna die trying!" He clenched a fist, and displayed it confidently.

"Pika," his partner squeaked in rebuke, " pii pikachu!"

Ash couldn't directly translate it, but as usual, he knew almost exactly what it meant. If he had been so confident, why had he bothered to ask Pikachu? Couldn't he just assume that his partner would back him up one hundred percent? Hadn't he always before? That Pikachu would have whatever fortitude the situation asked for, was a given. To just assume that Pikachu, his tried and true companion would make light of it all, was crossing the line. They were a team, after all!

He pulled his lips to the side with a slightly shameful expression. His own flimsy mask of pride was hardly getting in the way of the misgivings he had. Somehow, he was projecting those, in spite of himself, onto his friend. He grimaced. Earlier this week, it would have been hard for him to imagine himself so down in the dumps. He dropped his fist onto the pavement and hung his head.

"I didn't mean it like that," he murmured in apology, and Pikachu patted his shoe gently as his trainer slumped before him on the ground, in consolation. Ash just sat there for a few moments, and heaved out a few particularly long and ragged sighs. Before long, though, he bounced back, and held out his hands, scrunching up both of his Pokemon's ears, trying to boost his own tanked confidence a little. "I'm sorry I got on your case, buddy."

"Chuu." Pikachu soothed, gripping his trainer's fingertips in his tiny palms.

Ash couldn't help but smile as he looked at his friend. Just like the small Pokemon, he could feel a certain synergy radiating between them, as it always seemed to when the other needed a boost. With a rush of new-found energy Ash responded to it.

"Let's work hard!" – "Pikapi!"

They said plainly to each other, as if it were the obvious answer to the question they were silently asking. And yet, between them, the words conveyed a deeper meaning still.

_'Don't worry,'_ Ash knew his partner meant. _'I will be here.'_

Just as he had meant: _'I am relying on you.'_

He had wasted enough time sniffing and weeping, he thought, as he felt the corner of his mouth quake slightly, along with a certain pricking sensation in his eyes, and shook his head to rid himself of both. He instead extended his fist toward Pikachu again, holding it equidistantly between them this time, with none of the former ego.

"Knuckle-bump?" he asked with a chuckle, and a wide, legitimate grin cracked open across his face.

Pikachu obliged him with a grin of his own as he pounded his little yellow fist against the leather of Ash's gloves. The weary trainer felt yet another significant measure of verve return to him at that, and bounced to his feet.

"C'mon!" he yelled, with a wave over his shoulder. "Let's go!"

* * *

Moods were not exactly at an all-time high. As they mounted the ferry that would take them back to Twinleaf, that much was made obvious by Dawns stance alone; the way she would let her head roll away on her neck in response to almost any outside stimulus. Her Pokemon, particularly Bunneary and Piplup had been pretty distraught by the news, having never gotten to say goodbye to their friend, or his Pokemon, either -which was to say nothing of Ambipom, who had actually belonged to Ash at one point.

Brock supposed that he was probably handling the news as well as could be expected. He'd invested almost five years of his life now in traveling with Ash, barring a few on-again off-again distractions. It seemed reasonable that he should have been a little upset, but he was literally an adult now, aside from having had to act as one since he was very young, It wouldn't be to anyone's benefit to get all bent out of shape over it. Dawn didn't need fuel added to her fire, and Ash didn't need someone taking cheap shots at him for something that was already obviously too hard for him to handle.

Still, there was no denying that things were pretty much the pits.

"I don't see what his deal is," he heard Dawn say for nearly the tenth time beside him, eliciting a small sigh.

"He's just mixed up right now," Brock soothed, "that's all."

Dawn slumped over onto the railing, her head again rolling away from him in displeasure. "Then, sort him out."

Brock smiled hard at that, and looked out to the wharf as the ferry blew its horn and kicked it's diesel engines to low power. They were leaving the Pokemon League Castle Island. While to them, it meant leaving a show before it was over, to Ash, it meant leaving a show before it was over, and that show just so happened to be his life. That was a slight dramatization, sure, but it didn't change the fact that Ash was supremely dedicated to his career, and this outing had been nothing short of a door slamming in his face.

He couldn't really blame Ash for being upset, and try as he might- even as drastic as his decision might have been- he couldn't really blame him for that, either. Still, it did make matters very complicated, and there was not just him to consider. Dawn was now also upset, though he supposed that was reasonable as well. Unlike Ash, she had done very well on this, her premier season, and though Ash had paid her a great complement for that, and showed her a lot of deserved respect in his recent goodbye, he could certainly understood why she was so upset.

Her and Ash had come to be great friends, and great friends did not part ways easily.

One thing Brock had notices after years of traveling with the intrepid young trainer, was that Ash usually paid little attention to the emotions behind departure, other than those he could turn into a positive, and did his best to shield his face and hide his eyes, if he couldn't, until he was able to shrug it off. It was his way of dealing with, well, almost everything, once he got his head around it. Some may have dismissed it as him being oblivious to other peoples hardships, but anyone who really knew Ash would have told you that that wasn't it, at least not entirely. He'd watched it so many times now, as he and Ash had marched off into the sunset, leaving behind new friends and old faces. He remembered when they'd parted ways with May and Max, and with Misty, and almost countless others, and how there there had been similar grief shown by them, that would have appeared to be totally missed by Ash, or at least ignored as he continued undaunted on his way, but Brock doubted that was the case, because of one very important observation. When it came to Ash, his happiness and his anger were out on his sleeve for anyone and everyone to see, but Ash had always tried desperately not to let it show when he was upset.

Brock had his notions that this came from his family life, as Brock himself was more than familiar with, but it was not really his place to say. Those matters were personal, and while he considered himself many things, a busy-body wasn't one of them.

Perhaps another facet of this observation then, was realizing that Dawn was in her own way, both very similar, and crucially dissimilar. Her and Ash were very similar in that everything about her was out in the open as well, but in her case it was not always just the positive. Her confidence, her energy, her style and now her misery, all made very clear to everyone who would have taken the time to see. Of course, Dawn hid her tears, too, just like anyone- Brock had never actually seen her cry up close, only known that she had. Nobody really wants to be seen as a crybaby, after all. But it was her ready willingness to shed them, that Ash did not seem to share, and he guessed that was mostly the cause of all this. She was hurt that Ash did not seem as upset to leave her behind as she was to see him go. With her, that too, could probably take it's roots back to family life: An only child typically didn't have any reason to hide their emotions for anyone's convenience, or their own, having no reason to be expected to. Though, by that token, what really made her so different from Ash?

Here, jokingly, he tried not to feel a little grudging towards both of them, for garnering the sum of their parents attention, and interrupted his own train of thought.

He realized at that moment that he'd been staring blankly for some time, and struggled for just the briefest second to remember what it was he'd been getting at. "I don't think there's anything I can do," he offered, neutrally. When her head rolled away from him again angrily, he fell back into thought.

Maybe it wasn't that, though. Maybe it was just because she was younger. Not mature enough to really understand what he was going through, though he doubted that explanation carried much weight; he was creeping up on twenty, and he didn't understand _why_ Ash was doing this any more than she did, only that he was doing it, and that's all there was to it.

A possessive nature, maybe? What was more directly at the center of this, than a girl who wanted her friend back? He shrugged, wondering briefly if maybe it was because she liked Ash in a more intense way, though, that was well outside his realm of expertise. He pushed away that line of questioning. It was a little more than he was prepared to handle, and if she was barking up that tree with Ash, it was probably better she took this flavor of heartbreak instead of that one. He'd known Ash for almost five years now, and the only inclination he'd ever given the elder trainer that he even knew the opposite gender even existed was in passing jab. There was room in that boys head for Pokemon, and room in his gut for food, and not much else could squeeze itself in edgewise.

Brock hadn't noticed she was crying until she threw herself into him, nearly knocking him over the railing, and sending them both toppling overboard. Her sobs were quiet and soft, and not at all the way he imagined the tears of an only child should have been, as she slammed her face into his jacket, and used her hands to obscure her face from view. He felt sortof guilty now, for pretending to have known so much. He didn't say anything for a while, as he patted her back, and let it run it's course, still trying hard to consider the root of the situation.

He wondered if maybe there was something he could do. Alone, ostensibly, he could do nothing. Ash had said his piece, and there was a certain respect he had for that, as well as the young man who'd said it, which he would not sully by trying to force him to renege. What he could do, however, was convince someone else to. He decided after a little consideration, that he would need someone with a considerable amount of sway over Ash to talk some sense into him. That seemed a difficult task, however, as the only person that came to mind was his mother, and there was essentially no way he could get Mrs. Ketchum to join the cause, since it seemed she was already supportive of Ash's decision, or he had not told her yet, though regardless, it was unlikely that she would turn against her own son on the matter.

So then who else?

An epiphany dawned on him, and Brock perked his head before laying a hand on Dawn's shoulder.

he was, of course, thinking of a certain red-head who had always seemed to love making Ash's business her own. He smiled down at Dawn, who looked rather uncertain, her face reddened and moist, as he withdrew his Poke Gear from his inner vest pocket.

"Actually, you know what? Let me make a phone call."

* * *

Violet chewed her gum as she looked out over the reception desk, scanning the foyer from left to right. The coast was still clear. She slowly picked up her copy of Coordinator Weekly and very covertly opened it to the cover story. Lily had been ranting all day yesterday about this analysis article. Even Daisy had said it was pretty good, and so now she was eager to have a look as well, and there was only one major obstacle preventing her from doing so to the fullest: It was the busiest day of the training week, and Misty got all whiny when she caught you doing anything but standing at rigid attention. She was always such a little hard-ass about it, too.

She'd say something like: "Why are you always slacking off, Violet? Why can't you take this as seriously as your water-shows, Violet? I always do my best when you three need me to help, Violet! Blah-Blah-Blah, we have a reputation to uphold, Blah!" as though she'd built the entire Waterflower Dynasty with her own two hands.

Naturally, Violet understood that the gym had undergone some expansion recently, and that staffing was low, but it wasn't as though manning the reception desk was something that required your full attention. It was no big deal; Challenger arrives, page "Der Water-Fuhrer" over the intercom, tell them to have a seat. Cake-walk.

The article was about how different styles of judging were prevalent in certain regions and why. The article was pretty informative actually. It even gave tips on what foreign coordinators could expect going into certain regions, and what one could do to avoid cultural faux pas when on foreign soil, that might otherwise seem like a normal part of your routine. She flicked the corner of the page with her index finger, as she read.

A small beeping sound in the desk console caught Violet's attention, causing a momentary jostle of panic, as she slapped the magazine to the desk and flashed about, looking for the source of the intrusive sound.

"**Ring, Ring, Ring**," the automated voice of the telephone chirped up at her from the console, causing her to look down at the console abruptly. "**Phone Call, Phone Call!**" She felt rather silly, and tried to avoid betraying a blush, as she hit the pickup button.

"You've reached Cerulean Gym, Home of the Sensational Sisters!" She chirped, after clearing her throat a bit for the sake of appearances. Looking at the display, however, she quickly realized that she knew this person and dropped the formal tone from her voice entirely.

"Can I, like, help you?" she drawled in her typical accent.

Brock swelled a bit in the camera, trying to take up as much of the display as he could, unintentionally muscling Dawn to the side a bit. "I was hoping to speak to Misty, but..."

Angling his face down and slightly too the left, he arched one brow suggestively, while cracking a smile. "I must have called _heaven_ by mistake."

Violet's eyebrows flattened, and her finger did a small circular orbit around the hold button, before depressing it with a violent stabbing motion. From there, her fingers walked up to the button marked **'Leader Office'** and tapped it. Her little sister picked it up from the other end.

"Someone to see me?" Misty said, expectantly, as she appeared on screen, tapping a pen on the table in front of her, and scanning over some paperwork.

"No." Violet said, maintaining her displeased expression. "One of your friends is on line two for you. The horn-dog one. You know, what-his-name."

"Brock." Misty said, printing out a numerical figure on the page in front of her, not bothering to look up. She nursed a small smirk, however, and shook her head. Funny that it would still be so easy to identify the Pewter City breeder.

"Yea, that one." Violet confirmed in a mutter.

"Put it though, I'll take it in here." She said with a passive wave, dismissing her elder sister.

"Like, whatever you say." Violet scanned down the side of the console for the correct button to press.

"Oh, and Violet." Misty perked at the last moment, propping her elbow on the edge of the table exasperatedly. Laying her face on her hand, she looked into the camera, and then slightly downward, as though she were leering through the video-feed at something just over the cusp of the reception desk.

"What's up?" Violet asked, looking back from where she had been about to press the keys required to direct the call, with a pasted-on inquisitive look. The expression of Misty's face told her that it was a rather poor effort.

"Could you please put the magazine away and stop screwing around?" The younger sibling asked with a long, wispy sigh. "If you've got spare time on your hands, I could use some help with these tax forms."

Violet's eyebrows slammed together again and she punched the button to put the call through, and end the videophone conversation on her end, pretending as though she hadn't heard her baby sister's last comment. She scowled, and glared off to her right remind herself why she was putting up with this crap.

The Sensational Sister's recent conquest of the Johto Contest circuit this past season had been a resounding success. The Ribbon Cup with her name printed on it in the display case she was now glaring at was more than proof enough of that! Lily's next to it, from their native Kanto, held the same significance, though of a different design, and much to her enjoyment, not quite as tall. There was a spot set aside for the similar trophy that Daisy hoped to eventually win, just next to hers. Some of Misty's own accomplishments sat on the bottom shelf. Fishing tournament trophies and race medallions. Kid stuff, compared to the _true _crowning achievements of their family!

That little brat had a lot of never bossing her around, since she was the newest Top Coordinator of Johto! She couldn't wait for the next contest season to start, so that this term of indentured servitude could be over with!

Back in her office, Misty was treated to the image of Brock's contorted face, at the tail end of a full-volume, pained groan at close proximity to the microphone, startling her. Some of his spit was on the camera, and rather annoyed-looking Croagunk had a fist buried in his gut. Just over his opposite shoulder was a blue-haired girl with an equally displeased expression.

"Wha-" She fumbled, upsetting her calculator. "Are you getting jumped?"

As Brock continued to moan in sickened pain, the blue-haired girl held up a finger to delay any further questioning and returned the Croagunk to it's poke ball, before helping Brock back up. Getting his feet back underneath him, Brock soon had himself straightened out, and heaved a long uncomfortable groan before speaking.

"Hey Misty. How's it been?" He managed at last, on the better side of a pained sigh.

"What's going on?" She gasped. "What the hell was all that about?"

Brock waved his hands complacently. "Nothing, don't worry about it."

The blue-haired girl in the background rolled her eyes. Misty thought back to her sisters earlier comment, and put two and two together. Everyone has their own methods, she supposed. Where a good twisted earlobe worked wonders, she supposed a poison-jab was just as good.

"Alright..." She said, stooping to collect her calculator, before reappearing in front of the camera. "I've been fine," she said tentatively. "What's up?"

Brock seemed to roll a thought around morosely, before giving a shrug. "I'm guessing you heard."

Misty blinked for a moment, but then nodded understandingly, having foreseen what this call would chiefly concern. It wasn't often she got a call from Brock. Ash would usually give her a call about once a month, if he remembered, just to talk about the last badge he'd won, or the big battle he'd had for as long as his attention-span would allow, before hanging up. Brock would occasionally wave over his shoulder, but rarely did he ever call. Things must have been pretty serious.

"How's he doing?" She asked, quietly, fearful that he might be around to pop up at any moment and fly off the handle.

Brock's much easier tone informed her that this was not the case. "He didn't make it nearly as far as we thought he would. He was pretty beat up about it."

"Yea, I know. I saw coverage on T.V. They've been playing it over and over." She leaned back into her chair and sighed, placing a hand on her forehead. "I feel bad for him, Brock." She smiled weakly. "It was easier to take when I was traveling with you guys, but, I dunno." She waved her hand off into the distance. "I just get so caught up in it, anymore! I feel like Mrs. Ketchum: I can't stand to hear bad news about you guys."

"Yea, well, you know how hard he takes stuff like this," Brock said with an understanding nod. "He's just as bad as he always was."

Misty bobbed her head in kind. Her own stress levels were to blame for her runaway emotions over the ordeal, but that probably didn't compare to the real thing. "Yea. I really wish I could be there with you guys, but I'm completely swamped with the Gym right now.""

"Oh yea?" Brock said with a slightly wandering tone to his voice.

"We're doing some renovations right now, and it's that time of the year again." She held up the numerical form in her hand and waved it back and forth garnering a knowing roll of Brock's head. "Thankfully sisters are back from their Contests in Johto, but since they just took their second Ribbon Cup its hard to get them back down off their high-horse to get any work done." She said, giving a roll of her eyes, making it quite clear how much she disliked the fact that their performance skill had translated over to relevancy once the Contest rage had caught on. "_Coordinators._"

Brock hazarded a look over his shoulder at Dawn, who seemed to have either not heard, or was letting it slide on circumstance, before he turned back to Misty with a nervous laugh, and tried to steer the subject into safer waters. "Wow, a Ribbon Cup, huh?"

"Yea, Ash didn't tell you? I coulda _swore_ I told him the last time we talked." She quirked her brow.

"He must've forgotten to mention it." Brock excused his friend, nervously, but Misty just shrugged and grumbled over her paperwork, unconcerned.

"Seriously, Brock. How did you do all this on your own?" she asked, shuffling about the papers, with a look of utter contempt on her face.

"I didn't have to, really." Brock chuckled, and was suddenly drawn off topic. "You remember Yolanda? The fourth oldest? Accounting Genius. No joke. She was balancing the checkbook when she was five."

Misty turned the corners of her mouth downward, letting Brock know she was impressed. "Forrest isn't the only talented sibling, then, huh?"

"Oh boy," Brock said, rolling his eyes. "Mom called me the other day? Apparently little Susie pitched her third no-hitter in a row during her little-league softball game last week." He gesticulated excitedly, and Misty couldn't help but smile. Brock was very supportive and caring of all his siblings, which she found very sweet. "Salvador's starting his own Garage band, now. Tommy, he's the captain of the lacrosse team. Cindy, oh, she won first prize in the science fair this year! Timmy's double-jointed. Billy made high honor-roll, and Tilly can do thirty cartwheels without getting dizzy! I could go on and on and on, really."

Misty giggled as he beamed with pride, and sucked in a breath as she tried to remember what they were initially taking about. "Uh...Anyways," she began, before remembering. "Tell Ash I'm sorry. I wish I could have been there to cheer for him." She tilted her head sadly.

"Don't sweat it." Brock said with a sudden frown, which surprised her a bit. "Wouldn't do much good now, anyways," he added. "Plus, I'm not so sure Ash would have wanted to you here."

It was not like Brock to be so morbidly poignant. Sensing that the answer was loaded, she followed his lead, tilting her head away slightly, and adopting a more concerned expression. "And why is that, exactly?"

"Well, actually, you see..."

Brock related the tale in detail. How Ash had left them in Sinnoh without a word, and they had searched for him until they were asleep on their feet. And how he had called the next day to tell them that he had decided to continue his journey without them. He made a special effort to ham that part up especially, after Dawn gave him a desperate look. That was the point of this, after all. When his story was finished, Misty had a deep scowl on her face, and only one thing to say...

"Who does he think he is?"

Brock smiled at the thought of a job well done, and said his goodbyes.

* * *

To the untrained eye, the Viridian City Poke Mart may have seemed a typical establishment of it's sort. Its shelves full of goods and wares to peruse, bargains and discounts to be had. Were one to peel away the franchise exterior and all it's gaudy trappings, you would see a long family-held business. Were a person to look deeper, to peel away at the brick and mortar of the structure itself, presently you would see a man named Mark Sayso.

The Sayso family had owned the Viridian City Poke Mart for almost a two hundred years. His father before him, like his father, and just like Ol' Great Great Great Gran-pappy Sayso, who'd come to Viridian back in the Pioneer days and set up the place. Of course, then, it had been just a log cabin, and the goods sold had been slightly on the more antiquated side, but the spirit of the thing remained.

Mark Sayso was a man who was very proud of his line of work and what his family had accomplished, and continued to accomplish. That said, he was not a boastful man. Mark Sayso was a very pleasant sort, with a good way of speaking to people, like all good salesmen. He kept his head out of the clouds, of course, since he was a businessman, and a family-man besides.

His wife had passed away only a few years ago, rest her soul, and left him with a beautiful son whom he cherished doubly in her place. Presently he was trying to close up shop, but his mind was already at home, thinking of the little tyke waiting to be picked up, and to regale him with the today's adventures at day-care; Who was a doody-head, and who wasn't, so-on and so-forth. He chuckled pleasantly to himself.

"Ok, it's 5 o'clock, so this week's stock should be here any minute now. Finish counting this register for me while I go out back to receive it, would you please?" the Poke' Mart manager directed his assistant, his eldest nephew, from his sister's first marriage, after shaking himself from his reverie, and stealing a small glance at his watch. "Then we can go home."

"Whatever." His nephew, Jason, shuffled back behind the counter and blew his long, black, side-swept bangs out of his face uncaring, the way all teenage boys seemed to, these days. In that way that made them seem lethargic to the point that it seemed a mental handicap. Too much eye make-up and fingernail polish, Mark thought. It was bound to affect the brain.

His nephew was a good kid, though, if you let him be. He was a warm body to man the register, and an extra set of hands to stock the shelves if he needed it. Most importantly, he didn't steal anything, and he knew how to count, which were really the only requirements to fill the position, beyond an IQ above room temperature.

He grabbed his belt of security Pokemon from under the counter and put it on before making his way through the storage room and out to the receiving area. He could already hear the beeping of the truck backing up outside, right on schedule. He slapped a button on the wall to open the bay door and ducked under it and out into the fresh air. It was nice, he thought. Spring was definitely in the air.

As he straightened up, though, he stopped in his tracks. His eyes ran up the body of a rather fierce looking Rhydon, and straight into its intensely gleaming eyes. Mark let out a little yelp and fell backwards, landing on his ass, desperately clawing for for a ball on his belt.

"Please refrain from calling out any Pokemon, " An immense, well muscled figure said with an authoritative tone as he stepped out from behind his Rhydon. "I don't want to have to tell my buddy here to crush you." The man sneered at him.

"What's your name, guy?" His assailant asked as the the truck came to a halt neatly at the dock. Mark's wildly darting eyes caught sight of a man in scorching pink, who was most definitely not the regular guy, as he climbed out of the truck and proceeded to dolly crates and boxes into the storage room, whistling a jolly tune, and hardly minding the commotion.

Mark was still trying to decide if he should try to send out one of his Pokemon or if he should submit, and he was trembling all over. He'd taken classes for this! But they were about theft prevention; these guys were loading stuff in! What the hell was going on here?

"Muh…Mark..."

Rhydon snorted and lowered its head whilst continuing to leer, warning him not to move. The man walked slowly over to him and reached out a sleeveless, well-defined arm. Mark clenched his eyes shut, and let out a whimper. His hand subconsciously grasped at a poke ball, but was batted away by a massive palm.

"What's going on? What do you want!" Mark's eyes became almost impossibly wide as he tried to clamber away, buy was jerked roughly into a standing position, by the collar of his uniform.

"I'm about to tell you, but gimme your belt first," the man said simply, as though it were a casual thing, that nobody would think twice about.

"Hell no! Do I look stupid to you?" Mark yelped, but was shaken roughly for his resistance,

The man only raised an eyebrow at him and grinned, nodding over Mark's shoulder. "Not as stupid as you'll look flattened against that wall."

Mark was taken aback by the thug's response and a wave of defeat swept over his face. A few seconds later, Doc had six new Pokemon slung over his shoulder.

"Here's the deal: you are going to sell some product in your store for us," he said, reciting what Holiday had summarized to him just a few hours ago. "You get to keep 5% of the proceeds. Someone will come by every two weeks to collect and to stock you up. Don't worry your normal stuff is in the truck too, but people will start coming into your store that want our products, now that we have marked it. They are going to ask for things like 'Rare Candy', and 'Battle Items.' Everything's labeled, you'll figure it out."

Mark's eyes, if possible, widened further, and he began to look very anxious. He wasn't born yesterday, after all. That sort of thing was illegal! "I don't want to sell that mess here! Why should I go along with this anyhow?"

I didn't really offer you a choice, you're either going to do it, or your store will no longer be standing when you come to work tomorrow. Also, you run to the Jennies and you," the muscular man paused a bit for effect. "...Along with with Mr. Emo-Swoop in there, and your little snot-nosed kid?"

"Dead, Dead, baby, Dead." Holiday sang, as he continued unloading, as though it were the only part of the lyrics to the tune he was whistling that he could remember, continuing to pay no mind to either of them. Doc cracked up a little at his own corny sense of humor but Mark didn't seem to appreciate it like he did.

"Any questions?"

A rather sweaty and pale Mark shook his head and was relinquished. He fell a few inches to his feet, faltering slightly, before he quickly turned to go back inside.

"We'll be checking in on you REAL soon to make sure everything is going properly!" Doc hollered after him, as the last of the merchandise was unloaded and the back hatch of the truck was pulled shut.

He slapped the button to close the dock door, and hopped back into the cabin of the truck. The pink-jacketed passenger got back in right after, and they were away.

Doc leaned out the window of the truck, in order to back out, a smirk plastered on his face. "I feel like that went well."

"I felt like your one liner could have used a pun, personally." Holiday shrugged reluctantly, and reclined deeply in the passenger seat, putting his feet up on the dash.

Doc, slightly offended, lifted his hand from the wheel questioningly. "I thought my icy depart was pretty good," he countered. Holiday only grunted. "Well what would you've said, then?"

There was a long pause as Holiday considered it. "You know when he told you he didn't want to sell the goods, and he asked you why he should go along with it?"

"Yea."

"You know what I would have told him?"

"What?"

"Baggers can't be choosers."

They sat in silence for a a long while before they made eye contact with one another. Doc wasn't sure who cracked first, but soon they were both laughing so hard that Doc could hardly keep the truck in line, and Holiday could hardly be bothered to care.

Back at the Poke Mart, Mark emerged from the stock-room with a paralyzed expression of shock, catching sight of his nephew, waiting impatiently for him at the door. "Took you long enough," Mark heard him mutter. He didn't so much as bat an eyelash, though, and neither did his Nephew, whom quickly departed, tossing his apron up onto the hook by the entryway.

In fact, Mark's facial features didn't change as he turned on the alarm, and locked the door behind himself. They didn't change as he got into his car and drove quietly to the Daycare Center. Nor did they change as he drove home, and listened wordlessly to his son carry on about his days events. They most certainly did not change as he laid awake in bed and thought tensely about what his fate would be.

* * *

Agent Looker cursed under his breath. His investigation had been getting nowhere for almost two weeks because of bureaucratic whitewashing and backroom doubletalk. He wasn't exactly privy to it, but he could tell that's what was happening: The directors were giving an agent who was too good at his job, and asked far too many questions a inconsequential assignment and leading him around in circles. Maybe just to keep him busy, while they covered their asses from any blow-back over whatever it was they were trying to hide, or just to tarnish his service record and credibility. It had surprised him when his arrest of several high ranking Team Galactic members some months ago had been rewarded with reassignment and stagnation. He'd expected a fat pay-grade increase, and maybe even a promotion, and when it hadn't come, he'd thought that perhaps there had been an oversight, or that someone above him simply didn't like the fact that he hadn't been able to pin an arrest on Cyrus himself. Now, though, the rumors of what was _really_ going on were beginning to destroy his faith in the agency.

At any rate, it certainly didn't help that the local police force was interfering with his investigation by locking down the entire area of interest. Supposedly, a bomb-scare yesterday was their reason for denying him any inter-bureau cooperation, and he'd been shortly thereafter informed that the area of town he'd been granted joint jurisdiction over was in lock-down until further notice. He hadn't got that one quite figured out, but there were whispers on the wind of this being related to the PLF bombings –something which he didn't personally invest all that much confidence into. These back-water regions would fly into a panic over the slightest mention of the radical group, or the incident involving them, as though it were something more akin to the bogey-man. So much so that both the Pokemon League and most local police in these places had quietly written up contingency plans for dealing with such a threat as quickly and quietly as possible, and then denied vehemently that they were a threat at all.

Which, at least, ostensibly, seemed quite reasonable to him. The PLF bombings had only happened because of a major lapse in security, which had been rectified and eliminated almost immediately following their actual occurrence, ten years ago. That of course was not withstanding that there were absolutely no reasonable targets here in Viridian. Indigo Plateau, maybe, but not here. If that was their stance, though, this hardly seemed a matter that required this much response. Or at least, certainly not enough to interfere with his investigation. The Viridian Police dept was supposed to provide him with a plainclothes officer to take on an undercover investigation of the particular group of traffickers he was shadowing, but as far as what he was actually being told about it (which was, suffice to say, very little), she had been reassigned to handle the primary suspects in the departments ongoing investigation of these threats.

Load of Taurous shit, was what that was.

His quarry had been evading him with ease for nearly a week, now. Dancing through legal loopholes, and into zones outside of his jurisdiction, which in and of itself threw up countless red flags that this group was clearly being directed somehow, was structured in such a way that it couldn't have been commanded internally, and was certainly not indicative of your typical street-level thugs. These guys were part of something bigger. Whether it was Team Rocket, or a more globalized syndication, he wasn't privy to, and by the looks of things, he probably never would be. These recent events had stirred up a lot of police activity, resulting in far more than the casual interest typically paid to shady looking establishments and persons. Clumsy, brute force expended in the interest of this heightened state of alert was going to accomplish only one of two things: Either the small time guys involved were going to be arrested, and out on bail in a week, resulting in a renewed effort on their part to remain unseen, which essentially, would make all of the contacts and information he'd arduously collected thus far, obsolete.

Or, and he suspected that this would be the far less favorable outcome, as it would likely result in the redoubling of efforts elsewhere, and probably cost him the case entirely, was that this intensified security within city limits would drive them off entirely, causing them either to set up shop in Vermillion, or Cerulean, if he were especially unlucky, as it would be much more difficult to follow their movements in such large metropolitan areas.

The fact that the Viridian Police force was giving anyone without an Kanto-Issued Dex and Trainer Card a very thorough shakedown coming into and going out of Viridian, wasn't doing him any favors either, as he'd already pretty-much decided that it was a fifty-fifty shot that his guys were non-natives like himself.

He leaned against the lamp-post, watching the cross-walk with disinterest. He wondered what was going to happen first: Would this assignment cost him his job? Or would it cost him his sanity?

Without an agent to go undercover, his investigation was as good as sunk, even if the inter-bureau lock-down let up soon. He couldn't compromise himself, or the integrity of the case by doing it himself. The brass back home was sure to have internal affairs all over him if he tried to pull anything slick. Accusations of him working hand in hand with said suppliers were bound to come flying at him, if he even considered running a sting operation.

As an agent of the International Police, he was free to deputize anyone he deemed fit, based on any criteria he chose. He'd picked the particular officer who'd been originally intended to fill the role based on character. She had a history bringing a wide variety slime to justice, and it hadn't all been particularly by the books, but it was almost always successful, which he'd liked, for much the same reason that he was beginning to hate his own job. The red tape was intolerable, and got in the way of good officers, more often than it checked the bad ones. For that reason alone, he'd denied a whole squad's worth of volunteers to select Officer Penny for the assignment, and now he'd lost her to some investigation that to him amounted to the sort of fare mall security would have been sufficient for.

So, as it stood, he needed someone he could trust, and that would have to do. As the Viridian Police Department had already made quite clear to him, he was on his own, in that regard, and for that matter, all regards, so long as the heightened state of alert was over.

He considered, then what would be his most discerning course of action. As luck would have it, though, his answer was dropped right into his hands.

Across the street, Ash Ketchum was lightly jogging toward the center district of town, his trademark Pikachu right beside him. He never forgot a face (a sign of good police work, he remembered) and he didn't bother to question the coincidence. Though Ash was a civilian and he was hard-pressed to ask a kid to take on such a dangerous assignment, he couldn't look a gift Ponyta in the mouth. Policemen were a superstitious lot, and he was little exception.

He gave a shout. "Hey!"

Ash froze in his place, up on one leg, in the middle of his stride, and had to windmill both of his arms to stay upright, before turning his head to see who had yelled. He was surprised to see Looker here as well, of course. He caught Lookers handshake as it was offered to him, and held it tightly in his leather-bound grip.

"Looker!" He said with a smile. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd gone back home!" Ash didn't know exactly where home was, for Looker, but he certainly didn't expect it was here.

Looker shook his head wearily. "Long story."

Ash could see that Looker was troubled, from his expression alone, and so he dropped it. Looker could tell that his curiosity was not abated, but he wouldn't let it force his tongue on the matters regarding the reasons for his assignment here. It wouldn't do to destroy a kid's belief in the enforcement system by complaining about politics. "New assignment," he said, and left it at that.

Ash seemed satisfied at that, for which he was thankful. "I was wondering if you might be interested in helping me out," he clarified. "Are you busy?"

Ash's eyes widened, and then narrowed a bit, before he responded. "Well," he began, pointing vaguely. "I was sorta..."

Ash stopped to think about it. Did he really have a plan at all? What was he intending to do, exactly? The realization itself cut the legs out from under his previous recharge. He felt a sense of gloom cover him over, like a thick, wet blanket.

He sighed in confession, before shaking his head "No, n-not really."

Looker, likewise, could sense there was more there than was being said but, as he had not been pushed, he would not do so either. More importantly, the faster he got to brass tacks, the better. Something was bothering him, though, and it was not just this negative vibe coming off the trainer before him. His operative would require a certain something. A Hard-boiled Detective like Penny certainly had the qualities required. The know-how, the expertise, certainly. But Ash would have to skate by on heart alone. The rest, could be molded into shape as they went, but if his heart wasn't in it, then...

Of course, there was a way to get Ash going, he knew.

"So you'll help me out?" Looker crossed his arms, and regarded the trainer with scrutiny.

Ash shook himself free of his downtrodden spirits, and nodded. "Yea. Absolutely." Though his words were confident, his tone still lacked something that Looker was waiting for.

"Could be a bit dangerous. Sure you don't want to think it over?" Looker tried not to let the corner of his mouth turn up, as he played his gambit.

Ash reacted just as he'd hoped, making his mouth a thin line, and pushing down his eyebrows. Dangerous? Didn't he know who he was talking to? Ash crossed his arms similarly, and leered back towards the investigator. "I'm not worried."

Looker felt that was adequate. After all, he'd watched Ash fight against Team Galactic and their pair of bound Legendaries with the help of his friends, and the Lake Trio at Mt. Coronet. He didn't know of Ash's other, exploits, as few did, but that alone was proof enough for him. This was, of course, nowhere near that level of extreme.

The circumstances, however, were quite different and would call for a different skill set entirely, and therein lied it's danger. Furthermore, his appearance as it was now, would not do at all. The would have to take care of that later, though. First thing first.

"I'm currently investigating a group who's been attempting to traffic and sell quantities of illegal Pokemon supplements here in Viridian."

"Is it Team Rocket?" Ash ventured a guess. It didn't seem like all that terrible of a guess to him, given the circumstances, and his history with them, but Looker shrugged and shook his head uncertainly.

"Doesn't look like it, but I haven't ruled out that possibility."

"What sort of supplements?" Ash quirked a brow. "Like, Zinc and Iron and stuff?"

Looker shook his head. "No. Those are over-the-counter vitamins you're talking about." He held up his hand and ticked off fingers one by one. "The things we'll be looking for are Speeder, PlusPower, CritiCut. X-Defense, and in particular, Rare Candy," he finished, holding onto his thumb. "Very harmful schedule 1 substances."

Ash had heard of a few of those things before, but he wasn't really sure he could identify them on sight. Did Rare Candy look like actual candy? He didn't want to look like an idiot, though, so he kept his mouth shut.

"So what do you need me to do?" He asked, instead.

"I need someone to go undercover, and help me flush out the pushers, by posing as a buyer." Looker stated simply. Before Ash could respond however, the agent cleared his throat loudly. "First, though, we're going to have to make some changes regarding how you appear," He managed, trying to word it as nicely as he could.

"My appearance?" He looked down at himself, and at Pikachu, who only angled his head inquisitively in response to his stare.

"Could you show me your team?" Looker asked, holding up a hand to dismiss the question. It would be necessary to determine what course of action they would need to follow.

The callow trainer's smile returned. That was something he could get behind.

Ash presented his team with the cast of his hands, easily grasping the sum of his poke balls and casting them toward Looker with a flick of his wrist. Together, they struck a pose. Torterra bent his legs and crouched low with a roar. Staraptor spread his wings wide, stretching his pinions. Gibble opened his huge mouth and bared massive teeth. Infernape clenched his fists and lowered his brow, erupting into flame. Buizel crossed his arms and raised his nose high. Pikachu made a 'V' symbol with his fingers as he mounted Ash's shoulder, and the trainer himself made a matching set of thumbs up.

Looker, if he was impressed, did not show it. In fact, to Ash, he looked fairly displeased.

"What?" Ash dropped his flashy gesture and pivoted in place to regard both his team and the agent in alternating turn, before Looker cleared his throat.

"It would be better," the investigator began, already rolling his hand as if thinking of the best way to continue without offending, "if you had Pokemon that were more inconspicuous."

The explanation dug at Ash's temper. "What do you mean? We can be inconspicuous!" He turned to his team, in a flash. "Be Inconspicuous, guys!"

A moment passed and he turned back to face Looker, scratching his head in a way very similar to how all his Pokemon were, wondering what it was they should be doing. "Er... What's Inconspicuous mean?"

"The cover is a buyer." Looker ignored him again, shaking his head irritably. "Does a trainer who's got high-level Pokemon from a far-away region like Sinnoh sound like the type of character who'd be trying to get his hands on this stuff?"

"How the _heck_ am I supposed to know?" Ash, already annoyed, snipped at him. For a moment, they both fixed each other with malignant looks.

"The sort of person looking to get ahold of Rare Candy is in his late teens, early twenties, which, quite obviously, you are not, short-stuff, so that's strike one," at Lookers retaliation, Ash narrowed his eyes again, not liking the special attention being paid to criticizing his height. "Secondly, they don't dress like that."

Ash looked down at his apparel, which he had taken quite a liking to, then returned his gaze to the agent, who was now nursing a passive frown. "Like what?" he demanded, angrily.

Looker again seemed unimpressed by his bluster. "You look like your mommy still dresses you." He held up two fingers. "Strike two."

The young trainer's face turned blue, but Looker disregarded him. "Under any normal circumstances, I wouldn't be able consider your help, just for those reasons alone, but the situation has become rather desperate. So for now, you get an intentional walk to first."

* * *

A/N: I love puns. Don't expect this to be the last time. Thanks for reading, though. Sorry for the wait!


	4. Chapter IV

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon. _Or Bulbapedia, for that matter._

Summary: Misty sets out to stop Ash's self-centered diversion, and set him back on the straight and narrow. Ash learns his first lesson about traveling alone, and makes a major discovery, while things take a major turn for Team Rocket.

A/N: This is probably the first note that actually has anything to do with the content of the story, but, all the same It needs to be said: I pretty much hate what a lot of people typically do with Misty, and have her sitting around the Gym feeling sorry for herself, angsting over Ash, and doing nothing productive.

That said, I've taken some considerable liberties, that I'm sure more than one person will absolutely _hate_. I just wanted it to be clear that Misty has actually had experiences of her own since she traveled with the boys, as opposed to just filling a space- and that those experiences have caused her to grow in a similar way that Ash experiences over the course of his journey have. I've tried to make some of those introductory points to what has taken place during this gap (which encompasses roughly 3 years time in my story, if you cared to know) as interesting as I could, while still being indicative of the fact that Misty is a strong female character, and, of course, still a _tomboy_.

That is all. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

**PKMN2K10 **

**Chapter VI**

"The Other Side of the Fence"

After half a week of what felt to him like pissing his time away, wondering around downtown Viridian without the slightest sense of what he was doing, Ash hit a real slump. He hadn't been aware that when Looker had asked him to take on this job, that the investigator himself had absolutely no idea who was behind the trafficking, where to look for them, or for that matter what exactly they were supposed to do about it. So naturally, the task was beginning to make him rather moody, for two entirely exclusive reasons.

Firstly, and most obviously: this detective stuff was getting on his nerves. He made sure everyone knew that: He would fly off the handle every so often, at nobody in particular, when he felt like he was on to somebody who just turned out to be a random pedestrian. It had happened quite a bit now, unfortunately. Criminals should be clearly marked at birth, he reasoned. It would make this whole thing significantly easier, since you'd know pretty much immediately who was up to no good and who wasn't. And the getup was really beginning to irritate him, as well. What part of Looker thought that sunglasses and the itchy, annoying wool tuque that had replaced his cap for the foreseeable future, amounted to an acceptable disguise, Ash had little idea. Also, the fact that Looker had personally saw to it that his Sinnoh team was switched out for something more "intranspicuous" or whatever, irked his nerves.

It certainly wasn't that he disliked having Bulbasaur, Kingler, Muk, Tauros, and Snorlax on the active roster. Far from it, in fact. Still, it was the principle of the thing!

Secondly, and perhaps most paramount: he hadn't had a decent meal since he'd left his Mother's. Up to this point he'd been sustaining himself on crumbled up snack-crackers his mother had shoved into his backpack, which he had, on every journey previous to this thought to be something of a punishment. Now he regarded it as pure, angelic benevolence. Truly, it seemed that he'd neglected to consider what not having Brock around was really going to mean. There would be no more Lazy Boy No-Chew Stew. No more Pizza Pancake Surprise. No more food, in general, whenever he got hungry. But, there was something else to it, which he was trying very hard to ignore, that was not so removed from the situation and that was furthermore_ responsible_, he could see, for both of these grievances.

_He didn't have a plan. _Neither regarding this fiasco, or his decision to leave his companions behind and travel alone.

As he reached up and scratched under the knit cap for perhaps the fourth time in the span of that many minutes, he let out a bellow of truly biting annoyance. _This is all wrong_, he thought. _Things aren't supposed to be going this way._ He was supposed to be out battling! Making strides, improving his skills, doing SOMETHING! Not sitting here feeling sorry for himself, _again_!

He turned to Pikachu, who was gently plodding across the pavement, looking just as aimless as he did, and went to say something. He was interrupted by the growling of his own stomach, and took pause, to reconsider. When he felt he'd given it time to settle, he went to speak again. This time, the growling of his partner's stomach cut him off, and he gave up the idea completely. Think, he demanded of himself. Think of what needs to be done. All this walking the beat stuff is getting you nowhere! What you need, is to find out, to_ know _who is responsible. Not guess! What do you do to learn stuff? Where do you GO to _learn_?

_The library!_

He made a face into the open air in front of himself, as though he had just been told that the answer to two plus two was twenty-two. Seriously, what kind of thinking was that? The library? That was bogus, and he knew it. Maybe if he wanted to write a research paper. He rubbed his quaking belly. It was hard to think sensibly when he was hungry. Or at least he hoped so, since the alternative was that he was just dumb. When he heard Pikachu's belly again, he decided he needed to find a good place to get something to eat, before they were looking at each other like their next meal. It was to his ultimate displeasure when he didn't see anywhere to eat in sight.

What he did see, though coincidentally humorous, was somehow more upsetting:

They were standing in front of the Viridian City Library. He slapped a gloved hand over his face and wiped it from his brow down to his mouth, clasping his lips together in a pose of complete exasperation. Whatever, he thought: he'd had far worse ideas.

* * *

Midway through her fourth battle of the day, Misty's troubles had all but disappeared. She was working on putting the finishing touches on her newest win, and was pretty confident about her ability to wrap things up. In this regard, things had improved considerably as of this past year, even more so, given the nature of several more recent events. She was a good battler, but it was getting harder and harder to pull off convincing wins without a little help with the intangibles.

Brock's little brother Forrest having taken over the Pewter Gym and bringing it out of a languishing state as it was passed back and forth between Brock's mother and father, was a considerable help. Not to discount the young leader's skill, which was considerable, but perhaps just as importantly, Brock had left Forrest his Steelix. A massive Pokemon with strong defenses, it helped thin the ranks of trainers coming into Cerulean off a win considerably, which made her life much easier.

It was the trainers coming in from Vermillion and Celadon that had always been the biggest problem though, honestly. Electric type Pokemon were bad and grass type Pokemon were, in their own way, worse. Overcoming the fatal flaw of her beloved water-types was a difficult thing. How does a water-trainer overcome the type disadvantage? Or such was the age old question, she imagined. She supposed that anyone who favored mastery of an individual type had asked the same question often enough, and to speak of her own favorite was to say nothing of rock, or for that matter, grass-type. With five elemental weaknesses a piece, It was no small wonder Erika and Forrest had taken to rounding out their teams with one-off Pokemon, something she had elected not to do. For her, it was water-type or nothing.

So, naturally, rather than wax defeatist, she chose to favor an unorthodox approach to the conundrum of how to engage in a fight that was heavily slanted in her opponents favor, and granted, while not all of them had been successful, she had met with a reasonable degree of success. For a while she had been looking into dual-type combinations, and actually ended up borrowing a Whiscash her sister Lily had traded for in Hoenn, but alas, the first trainer with grass-type starter that rolled through town had put a stop to that short-sighted nonsense.

The problem, she found, was that almost any dual-type water Pokemon would either trade one weakness for another, or would cancel one out, at the expense of compounding the other. She was going to look around for some new answers to the problem in due time, but for now, she would stick to her usual strategy.

She'd let her mind wander enough. It was time for another all out all-out attack with Water-type Pokemon! She threw her hand out in a wide radial arc. "Let's sweep the deck, Gyarados!" From the deep stillness of the pool came a huge shadow, and the challenger, a young trainer from Saffron promptly yelled for his second Pokemon, a jinx that had been giving her a considerable amount of trouble so far to, get back, but it was too late.

"Aqua Tail!" she called out, an almost instantly, Gyrados' massive finned tail jutted from the surface with a shower of spray and cut horizontally in a 10 foot swath over the edge of the pool. The attack struck home with a resounding and thoroughly satisfying 'smack', sending the psychic type flying into the adjacent pool across the gym with a splash of it's own.

She watched the challenger flush as he withdrew his Pokemon. Meanwhile, she switched gears and ordered the Atrocious Pokemon back under the surface, awaiting his next selection. He dug in his jacket, exchanged his Jinx's poke ball and produced his final Pokemon of the three he'd selected to use in their match. His Exeggutor emerged onto the field and she was very thankful for her foresight. Beneath the water, Gyrados was safe from most Psychic attacks, and from a good deal of Grass type ones as well. This was the second time she'd seen this Pokemon, and she'd relied on just this same strategy to defeat it the first time this trainer had challenged her. She was apparently not the only one who was aware of that, either.

"She did this same thing to us last time, Omelet!" The trainer called to his Pokemon, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Use Sludge Bomb on the water, but stay away from the edge! Force her Gyarados out of the pool!"

Misty felt her face contort, as the Exeggutor threw up a huge glob of putrid sludge and spit it a considerable distance into the pool. For one, that essentially wrecked the strategy she'd hoped to employ as the attack itself would have a drastically weakened effect, but essentially make it impossible for Gyrados tostay submerged for any extended length of time without being poisoned, and two, as she watched the sticky brown goop dissolved into the water she was reminded of how much effort there was to be put into cleaning the pool before she could leave this evening. She dared not entertain the thought of asking her sisters to do it in her abcense, after all. Maybe if she wanted a HazMat disaster on her hands. She stifled a groan.

"Alright Gyrados! Lets bring the fight to him! Out of the water!" On her command, the long serpentine form of Gyrados slithered out of the water at the opposite edge of the pool, careful to avoid the spreading brown floe across it its surface, whilst working to maintain a safe distance.

"Omelet! Barrage!" The young trainer ordered, and threw his hand in the direction of the large broadside target presented by Gyrados' large form. Many coconut-like seeds exploded from the foliage of Exeggutor's head like bullets, aimed right on target.

"Bounce over it!" She shouted and Gyrados threw his tail up, then slapped it back to the tile floor so hard that it propelled the monstrous Pokemon high above the oncoming attack, nearly into the overhead lighting. The Barrage collided uselessly with the base of the podium on her end of the field, covering the spot her Pokemon had previously occupied with plant matter. The young trainer could only gape upwards at the monster as it arced through the air overhead with an almost eerie grace. She always reveled in the surprise evident on the faces of her challengers when they saw a Gyrados airborne. They didn't call it a flying type for nothing!

"G-Get out of the way!" The trainer shouted, remembering himself, and obediently, the Exeggutor lunged to the side. Gyrados smashed back to solid earth, having cleared the entire breadth of the pool, spinning itself in tight circles and garnering forward momentum. With the combined energy of gravity and centrifugal force it dropped it's large mass authoritatively to the floor just where Exeggutor had been only a split second before. Misty was sure she saw some tiles jump out of place. The wind displacement alone, was enough to topple her challenger's armless Pokemon, even though it had otherwise escaped unharmed. It's prone state gave her all the advantage she needed, however.

"Ice Fang!" She ordered and without fail, her Gyrados reared it's head, making quite visible the frigid blue glow of it's fangs before striking. The super-effective move was perfectly aimed, and struck home on the helpless Pokemon as it tried to right itself. Gyrados locked his jaws shut, and coiled around the plant type, denying it any possibility of escape.

She pretty much considered the fight to be finished at that point. What she hadn't counted on was the Exeggutor being so hardy, as to remain in fighting shape. "Sleep Powder! Shoot it straight into Gyrados' mouth!" the challenger cried. No way, she thought. No way that Exeggutor could bounce back from something like that, and no way this trainer had improved that much in a week, to go for a gambit like that! But yet, there it was.

A burst of glinting blue powder vented from all sides of Gyrados' mouth and out of his nose, filling her trump-card Pokemon's throat and sinuses full of the noxious substance. It was no time at all before the snake-like Pokemon flapped limply from it's "death-coil" and slid belly-up into the pool. Thus rendered helpless, Misty recalled it and heaved a sigh.

Her third Pokemon, she had become very disinclined to use over the past few years. Well, perhaps _disinclined_ was not the right word, so much as, _hesitant_. Starmie was quite handy in a Battle, and no slouch at all when it came to Contests, as her sisters had discovered, but it had begun to lack the staying power required for the frenetic pace or drawn out endurance that gym battles or appeals sometimes required, as of late. Which made sense the way she saw it, since the Mysterious Pokemon had belonged to their mother, and was a essentially a hand-me-down through the entire family, (her having essentially 'inherited' it from Lily, who had from Violet, who had from Daisy, already in what she guessed had been nearing it's Golden Years) as it were.

The hard truth of it, was that Starmie was getting quite old now and though it still seemed to want to perform at the same exceptional level it always had, there were times where she could just tell that the jam was spreading thin, so to speak. Still, she didn't try to keep Starmie excluded, and Starmie like always, was more than eager to please, and even more eager it seemed to get in the mix, which she was perfectly fine with, so long as it didn't push itself too hard. She smiled down at the poke ball in her hands. Starmie wasn't her first Pokemon, and it wasn't her strongest either, but it was, without a doubt, her most loyal. It was special to her for almost too many reasons to count, and she couldn't imagine trying to run this gym without it.

"Starmie, Let's go!"

Hurling the poke ball out as far as she could manage, the purple starfish Pokemon burst onto the field with a cry of "Hoh!" and floated serenely over towards the action, while careful to avoid the hanging dust in the air.

"Lets open up with a Rapid Spin! Clear this Sleep Power away!" Misty called, watching with satisfaction as Starmie carried out her orders to perfection, blowing the remains of the status attack away on a gyre of wind, and unsettling the palm-like leaves on Exeggutor's head, as it tottered back to it's feet clumsily, drastically weakened by the attack it had previously weathered. Both competitors knew that this was going to be one sided, but the challenger it seemed, would not relent, and so therefor, neither would she.

Suspecting that he would go for the strongest attack his Exeggutor could muster, she ordered her Pokemon into position accordingly. "Starmie! Back off and wait for it!"

And just as she suspected, the trainer did. "Omelet, lets finish this! Hyper Beam!"

Reacting on lighting reflexes, she called out to her own Pokemon in kind. "Now, Starmie! Dive!"

Having covertly positioned itself back over the edge of the pool, Starmie dropped out of the air, and into the water with such speed that it's narrowed edge hardly upset the surface. The massive beam of light heated the air over the surface, dissipating harmlessly, after filling the gymnasium with haze. Having spent next to no considerable time in the water, Starmie emerged virtually unaffected by the harmful toxic sludge and the bright gleam of it's gemstone let Misty know it was ready to put her counterattack into play, whenever it was called for.

"Ice Beam!" she directed simply, and the Exeggutor, seriously weakened and now unable to react due to fatigue, fell flat on it's back coated in crystals of frost, knocked clean out by the attack.

That was another one in the bag, she thought, returning Starmie and kissing the ball that held it, before re-affixing it to her belt. She hopped down off the podium, sliding down the diving ladder at it's rear, before walking around to meet up with her challenger, who was recalling his own Pokemon as she approached. When he caught sight of her coming, he turned his gloomy look into an uninvented smile just a second too slow to avoid her notice.

"You're really good. I trained my butt off for a whole week, and you still beat me. I don't get it. Our first two badges were really easy compared to this place!" He said, patting the ball that held his Exeggutor. "Guess we've got a lot to work on, still."

Misty nodded acceptingly, trying not to seem like she was too proud of what she'd heard, even though she was practically fit to burst. "You're going to find that there's always more to learn and improve on, no matter how far you go," she explained. She had learned something today as well: Don't underestimate the unassuming.

"I guess so." He said, squinting his left eye, with a pained expression and rubbing the back of his head as though that was a hard pill to swallow.

"That said, I think you made a lot of progress in such a small amount of time." She acknowledged. "I'm prepared to offer you the Cascade Badge, just for showing me that you learned from your mistakes in our last battle and were able to adapt to what the situation called for." The boy's eyes lit up, and she couldn't hide a smile, as she withdrew a teardrop shaped badge from the inside of her jacket, and flicked it out to him off her thumb. "Take this, to show that you learned what it meant to face a true water-type specialist!

* * *

Ash clicked his tongue at the idea of searching shelf after shelf for a book on the stuff he was looking for, for several reasons. One, he was fairly certain he didn't know anything about Dewey, or his fancy decimal system. And two, looking at a book seemed deathly akin to something a person might have considered 'studying', and he wouldn't submit himself to that sort of punishment no matter how much of a coincidence him being here was.

Besides, who read books? He shook his head, and looked uncomfortably at Pikachu, who seemed oblivious to his inner turmoil. No, he decided,he would do things a little differently. He'd just do what any normal person(that is, any normal, non-library-dwelling-nerd person) did when they needed to know something: He'd just get on Bulbapedia! _Duh._

He took a number, and sat down at one of the open public terminals. After throwing his backpack over the chair, he stretched a bit while he waited for the browser to come up.

"What a modern age we live in, Pikachu," he noted to his companion, as the delusion of intelligence set in fully.

"Chupi?" Pikachu regarded him skeptically, with a frown that made it pretty obvious that he didn't enjoy being here.

"Everything a person would ever want to know, right at his fingertips." He pointed his thumb in the direct of the monitor. "Pretty futuristic, huh?"

Pikachu shrugged, and rolled his eyes. When the terminal had booted up, Ash got to work, sobered by his partner's lack of enthusiasm. "You're right. This sucks."

He found it was pretty difficult to type with gloves on, so he took them off, which proved to be an ordeal in and of itself. After using a combination of biting on each fingertip, and trapping the glove under his arm, he was finally able to remove one, and set about typing in the web address.

"Let's see. W-W-W, dot..." He henpecked, before spinning his finger over the keyboard, searching for the B. "Uh..."

After some ten minutes of annoyed chatter between himself and Pikachu (whom apparently had a fairly strong opinion of the value of good keyboarding) he managed to find them to the article concerning Rare Candy. The main reason it had taken so long, was that midway through their banter, they'd been shushed by a passing librarian, and that had only made them more irritated. The resultant shock he'd received from his partner when he'd _accidentally _punched in a comma instead of a period had also caused the terminal to reboot, so you had to factor that in too. It was okay, though, he understood. They were both hungry and tired.

He leaned towards the screen, highlighting the script with the cursor as he skimmed through it. He was silent for several minutes, as he scanned the screen, trying to garner something useful. Something that would help. He gasped, when he thought he'd come across something interesting. He nudged Pikachu gently with his elbow.

"Pika?"

"Says here that the main ingredient in Rare Candy is..." he struggled to sound out the word out syllable by syllable, "...meth-uhl-nay-zoe-thigh-luh-meen. Which is refined from the latex of the stalk and budding flowers of... Nay-zoh-vair som-nee-quair-um," he offered, again, given pause by the tough Latin. He read ahead. "Oh, and it's also the same plant that produces Enigma Berries, so named for their distinctive 'question mark' pattern." He drew a question mark out in the air with his finger for Pikachu's benefit. "See Enigma Berry," he concluded, for the sake of reading the paragraph in it's entirety.

"Pika pika?" Pikachu asked expectantly, obviously wanted to know what made that so important.

Having read the entire passage verbatim, he could only wonder that himself. About all he'd understood was 'question mark'. He knew what those were. Everything else was written in a dead language! And he doubted it would really help him anyways. Why he'd expected to find anything that would be of any real use in a criminal investigation here in a library he had no idea. He pushed himself away from the the table with a sigh of defeat, and collected his things to leave.

"What a dumb idea _that_ was."

* * *

It wasn't until late in the afternoon that she'd finished up at the gym. The required cleaning after her final match had taken her the better part of three consecutive hours. Since she had been forced to give her sisters the day off in exchange for them watching after the Gym while she was gone, and now that Tracey had gone back to Pallet to help out the professor full time, the job of draining, cleaning, and finally refilling the pool had become nearly all-day affair, even with the Gym's massive pump system. She'd also had to clean roughage and scorch-marks off the floor, which thankfully, she'd been able to wrap up in the mean-time. Her daily maintenance checks on the new electric ozonation filter Professor Oak had engineered especially for her sake were, as always, merely a formality. Likewise, her last task, that of ensuring that all her Pokemon, excluding those she intended to take with her, were fed and provided for, was strictly her pleasure and never an inconvenience.

That said, she did let go of a long exhale when she locked the double doors behind herself, after waiting for Maril to exit behind her. She and her Aqua Mouse Pokemon took the steps two at a time, as she stuffed her keys in her pocket. It was a relief to finally have some time off, even if it was for something so asinine. Being a Gym Leader was hard work and required her fullest, day in and day out. It would be nice to relax. She briskly walked the paved path back to her home, which was situated directly behind the Gym, out and around the wood and steel framework construction zone that was rapidly transforming itself into the newest wing of Cerulean Gym, and let herself in the front door, this time following behind Maril, who plodded inside with a similarly satisfied expression to her own.

Misty struggled not to look at the couch when she paused there to throw her jacket over it, in passing through the living room, for fear that she would go and sit on it; something that would probably result in an unintentional nap, which she couldn't afford. She had to get out of here soon, if she wanted to get to Pallet and back in three days, with enough time to properly chew Ash a new one. She felt her eyebrow twitch at the thought. That jerk was still just as self-centered as always.

She climbed up the stairs and to her room, where she intended to get changed, but ended up just throwing a t-shirt and pleated skirt on over her wet-suit when she remembered exactly how she would be traveling and what the weather was like outside. She put her jacket back on, as she came back down stairs, and shrugged it high up onto her shoulders, as she passed the hallway mirror.

Her sisters had gotten it for her in Johto, from a fashion show, they'd said, and brought it home to her as a joke, since the design had had such a poor showing the artist had literally given it away. When she'd said she liked it, they'd said "You _would_." but, screw what they thought. It was a nice jacket! It was a thick, light blue fabric with darker, more rigid material at the rounded cuffs and high buttoned collar, as well as along the zipper seam. She dug out her keys, and painstakingly removed the key to the gym from her key-ring and set it on the the hallway table in the foyer, and wrote a message for her sisters on the tablet nearby.

'Be back Friday. No wild parties!' she penned out, with a tiny laugh to herself, before heaving her backpack from it's hook on the back of the door and heading out to the garage. She stepped out onto the cement floor and flicked on the light, illuminating what was easily one of her most prized possessions, as Maril sprang from the baseboard and climbed up her back, working at the zipper to her bag, in effort to take up residence therein. She reached back over her shoulder with the assist, as she walked over to her bike. She was a big fan of biking to be completely honest. It was one of only two hobbies she had time or desire to keep outside of her full time obligations at the gym, and she had a good deal invested into it.

Her bike, following it's eventual repair and return with her to Cerulean City, had undergone a good deal of customization at the local bike shop. Something, which had as of late turned into a sort of small endorsement deal; benefiting both her and the owner of the Miracle Cycle shop. The Gym's expansion, of course, a new aquarium exhibit, was thanks in part to this arrangement, and Miracle Cycle had had a lot of sales with their new signature line modeled after her own highly modified bike. They were quite nice, from what she'd seen, being complete with the same black magnesium rims, and all the fitted extras like the titanium goose-neck, and the high-tension shock absorbers in the seat post and fork.

Yes, she did enjoy biking, and everyone seemed to know it. She rode it around often enough, and didn't mind mentioning it, or being in the public eye doing it. Such were the terms of the endorsement, after all, so she made a concerted effort to do it as often as time allowed. The other hobby she held interest in, however, her better judgment forced her to keep private. Well, truthfully, it was more that her sisters had absolutely forbade her from speaking of it, for fear that it would hurt the Waterflower image, to be honest. Which was strange, given that they had in fact ignited her interest in it, in the first place, whether they knew it or not.

It had happened two summers ago, during the off season, before her sisters had even started their Contest training, and shortly after returning from their round-the-word trip. Daisy, who like the rest of them had very little to do at the time, had apparently gotten caught up in a bit of media induced paranoia after hearing about an incline in violent crimes on unsuspecting women during the 11 o'clock news one night, and of course, like her sisters often did, promptly whipped the other two into a mania of macabre what-ifs, and worst-case scenarios. So naturally, the next thing she knew, the Sensational Sisters plus one brat were signed up for a self-defense seminar at the Cerulean City Convention Center, the very next day, much to her chagrin.

Though, she had been pleased to find out shortly there-after that the week long seminar was actually part of a much larger mixed martial arts conference being put on there by Chuck, Bruno, and some other fighting type trainers from Hoenn and Sinnoh, and she'd secretly spent the rest of the week getting involved in kickboxing and judo, with actual real-live _sparring_, while her sisters were learning how to gouge eyes, kick groins and scream really loud at sinister looking _punch-dummies_.

She'd established herself pretty quickly as a girl who was tough enough, mean enough, and hard-hitting enough to stand toe to toe with anyone she got a mind to, and though she'd eventually lost out time and time again to those with immensely more experience, she'd gotten quite a few approving nods, and pats on the back for her efforts. As deranged as it may have sounded, (and as sick as her sisters had thought she was, when she'd shared it with them) she couldn't think of much of anything much more satisfying, other than her current line of employment, than feeling she'd gotten when she'd felt the nose of a guy training under Bruno twice her size go _crunch_ under her training glove.

When they'd come home, all her sisters were whining about their sore muscles but she'd gone straight to her room upstairs and iced down her bruises, while she looked online for sporting equipment and instructional DVDs. When her sisters found out what she'd really been doing, they'd been most displeased, and did their absolute best to nip it in the bud, with annoying persistence that was rare even for them.

"The Sensational Sisters are not thugs!" they'd said. "The Sensational Sisters are lovers, not fighters!" Which, of course, only fueled her fire. She wasn't a Sensational Sister, she reminded them, as they were often so quick to remind her.

In the end, though, she let them pretend to have their way. She didn't have time to get into classes, anyways. She would still come out here and lay a few big punches into the heavy bag whenever she'd had a miserable day, or whenever she'd taken too much grief from her sisters, though. She gave the 100kg bag a slap as she passed it, and mounted her bike. She walked herself up to the garage door, and poked twice at the the button to open it.

What her sisters didn't know, wouldn't hurt them, she reasoned. Probably why she hadn't told them where in particular she was going. They'd just stick their big noses where they didn't belong, just like they always did. She chuckled to herself while she ducked under the door as it came back down, taking special effort to make Maril was well situated over her shoulder, before letting gravity carry her down the long, paved driveway. Pushing her sneakers against the carbon-fiber pedals, and standing vertically from the seat, she smiled into the wind as it rushed past her face.

She couldn't wait to see what her sisters had to say once she turned sixteen and she traded this bad boy in for a motorcycle!

* * *

His stomach gurgled loudly as he sat on the park bench, furthering his quickly compounding ire. He'd gotten tied up shortly after leaving the library, following a suspicious looking person, who was carrying a bundled packages under their arm, for the better part of the day only to find out, quite upsettingly, that they were in fact a parcel deliveryman. No more fed than he had been many hours ago, he was halfway through stretching a palm across his midsection, and rubbing it vigorously, when someone came and plopped down beside him, loudly flapping open their newspaper. Normally, this wouldn't have bothered him, and he'd have just scooted down a bit to accommodate.

...But he was practically insane with hunger, so instead, he arched a brow angrily. He was sitting here for crying out-loud! Didn't anybody have any manners?

"Don't look at me." The person said offhandedly, as though they couldn't be bothered to give him more than passing notice, and boy did that really get him going! Pikachu, who likewise had not had his usual amount to eat, was in no less fowl of a mood.

Vexation intensified by his masters own, Pikachu put his tail against the metal framework of the bench, and grounded himself out. Ash wisely lifted his arm and glared daggers at the unlucky intruder as he danced around in his seat, and their newspaper belched out steam courtesy of the high-voltage warning shot. He and Pikachu were surprised when the fidgeting figure tore off their sunglasses and revealed themselves to be Looker, incognito. Surprised, but not really pleased.

His comment made sense to Ash now, and he casually looked away, pretending not to know Looker now, as part of their incognito act. The current stopped, and they waited for Looker to regain his composure, and the yelling to start. It did, of course, but Ash could hardly be bothered to listen. Inspecting it out of the corner of his eye, the smoking newspaper crumpled in his hand, in Ash's mind, had already become a giant, _sizzling_ pork-chop.

And did it ever look delicious. He could see the little specks of seasoning, and the flakes of herb and spice, so clearly on it's juicy, ample cut. He could almost feel the texture of it's delectable, fibrous meat between his teeth – crispy about the edges, but not too dry, just the way he liked it! Its flavor, so intensely satisfying, that it rendered him absolutely still and silent, holding his fork aloft just centimeters from his lower lip, as he focused on enjoying each and every chew.

Feeling his mouth water intensely, Ash blinked himself back to reality.

"Huh?" he asked ignorantly, wiping a string of saliva from his lip with embarrassment. He felt like he'd just been asked a question. How long had he been out? He glanced at Pikachu, but his partner's hypnotized expression told him that he'd been likewise distracted.

"I asked what you've been doing all this time, Ketchum!" Looker said, angrily sliding his own sunglasses back on and flapping his newspaper back open, only to find that all the letters had bled together. His frown deepened.

Thinking about food, was of course, the first answer that came to mind, but a bit of deeper contemplation made him realize what Looker probably meant since the last time they'd seen each other. He backpedaled and tried to recall what it was that he'd done last, careful not to let his eyesight wander back to the newspaper.

"Doing some research at the library," he said at last, hopeful that he could omit the fact that he'd followed a mailman around all day. "I wanted to see if I could find out a little bit more about the stuff they're selling," he added, to round out the explanation.

"Good instincts." Looker remarked, his tone softening a bit, as he still continued to pretend-read. "What did you find out?"

Ash sighed. Next to nothing, he thought. He tossed his hand a little bit to present what he had learned with as much body to it as possible. "The main ingredient comes from the same plant that Enigma Berries come from, did you know that?"

"Yea." Looker's eyebrows jiggled irritably a bit over the top of his sunglasses. "Everyone knows that. What else?"

Miserably, Ash thought about adding on the interesting little trivia about the Berries themselves, but decided that it was probably another little bit of obvious he was missing out on. "Nothing," he admitted. "That's it."

Looker made an affirmative grunt, and rolled his eyes, which only made the desire to remain silent on the days affairs increase. He narrowed his eyes. If Looker was so_ smart_, he thought, why was he asking for help in the first place. A suddenly malicious thought dawning on him, Ash leaned back into the bench and reached up for Pikachu, casually scratching behind his partners ear. He remembered that he was supposed to be receiving information from Looker, concerning the case, when and if it became available. So why, then, wasn't it available.

"So what did _you_ find out?" There was a cough, then silence, which really said just about all that Ash needed to hear. He struggled not to let a small grin cross his face. The fact that Looker hadn't uncovered any more than him wasn't really much of a thing to celebrate if it meant that there were still people out there slinging this stuff in the street, but it did help evaporate his anger a bit.

Looker sighed uncomfortably, before answering his question. "I didn't want to tell you this, for obvious reasons," he began, tilting his head back, and rubbing the bridge of his nose to ease his own discomfort, "but this investigation is taking place outside of my jurisdiction."

When Ash was silent, leaving Looker to ponder whether the explanation surprised him, or he just didn't know what the word jurisdiction meant, he continued hastily. "I have intelligence reports from the Ishuu International Police Headquarters, confirmed by the authorities here in Kanto, that indicate an increase in drug traffic in this area."

He thought for a moment about how best to continue. "Police work isn't always that simple, though." He explained, to Ash's blank face. "I'm being denied joint discretion by the Viridian Police Department at the moment, because of some internal affairs issues, currently." He let out another long sigh, as he attempted to sugar-coat the situation. "And because of the nature of such a sensitive case, I'm not allowed to get as personally involved as I'd like."

Ash nodded vaguely, and Looker supposed that would have to be good enough. "Just understand, that you're the only person I can count on, at the moment. If it seems frustrating, I'm asking you to persevere: We'll have a breakthrough eventually."

Ash thought about what was being said to him, for a moment but said nothing. He only nodded again. To Looker, he appeared confused, and he felt guilty that Ash was going along with it, even though he clearly understood none of what he'd just said. It wasn't the fact that he couldn't comprehend Looker, that made gave Ash pause, however. It was that what he'd said seemed oddly prescient of his life at the moment.

_Just persevere. You'll have a breakthrough eventually._

Looker was pleasantly surprised when Ash smiled out at the street in front of him. "I should probably get back to it, then."

He had, after all, promised to help.

* * *

"Your legal council has arrived." Detective Penny said, sounding almost grudging, as she relinquished control of her prisoners. She unlocked the cuff that bound her to Jessie, or rather, Jessie to her, and slapped the open cuff onto James' wrist, who whimpered appropriately at the harsh strike of the metal ratchet, tightening it down with a discomforting application of grip-strength. She glared harshly at both of them, and at Meowth, between them, who had been fitted with a set of manacles that fully restricted the use of his sharp claws.

Their time with Detective Penny earlier today, as it typically was, was spent sitting in a confined room, listening quietly to Penny ask questions about things they didn't know, or didn't dare answer, and their silence was increasingly degrading her patience. She'd separated them, for individual questioning earlier in the week, and she was pretty sure James had sang like a stool-Pidgey about whatever she'd asked him, because her own later questioning had seemed disturbingly informed. They were still under orders to remain silent on all accounts, however, and whatever she had gleaned from James must have proven useless, since she had still been hounding them on a daily basis; asking uncomfortable questions, pressing into their personal space, using anything short of physical abuse or deprivation to get what she wanted.

Penny had almost gotten her to crack when she'd done some real digging into their scholastic reconds, and come back into the room, casually calling Jessie a name that she'd been referred to once or twice as in high-school, before she dropped out. She'd literally reduced James to tears in seconds with some embarrassing pictures from his time at Pokemon University. Penny didn't seem to have any such dirt on Meowth, but the feline was careful not to try his luck.

They still were only vaguely aware of what they were actually being charged with and were entirely without guidance, having only been transported from where they'd been arrested, to their holding cell, and then from there to the interrogation room and back. It would be good to finally hear something from the outside.

"Mr. Archer." Penny said venomously, at the man who now stood before them, adjusting the collar of his black oxford and straitening his tie and jacket, which were both faultless white. The teal-haired executive was the perfect image of Silph Co. luxury, which made sense, considering he was the mega-corporation's acting CEO, and General Council. As Penny likely suspected from her previous investigation, and as the Rocket trio already knew, he was also a very high-ranking Team Rocket Admin.

Archer cleared his throat. "I'll take them from here, Detective."

Penny's glare intensified. "Sir." She turned on the heel of her boot, and stormed away. Next to her, she could feel James exhale like he'd been holding in a breath all week. She felt likewise relieved. Meowth let out a similar groan of satisfaction on seeing her depart. Archer said nothing, but instead, tossed his hand out ahead.

"After you." He said calmly. "I would like to have this business finished as soon as possible." He noted quietly, as they walked through the large wooden doors into the courtroom. "So if you would do as little _talking_ as possible, we can have this resolved before my night-cap."

They all nodded dumbly, in response. Anything to be out of this terrible situation would do just fine. If all they had to do was duck their heads, and let him take care of things, then all the better. The four of them took up chairs at the defendant's table, and waited for the proceedings to begin. They did, just as soon as everyone was in their place, and the appropriate formalities were dispensed. Standing before the judge, Jessie shifted her gaze cautiously around the courtroom. There were a lot of powerful people present, and the general air of the place heaped a great deal of anxiety onto her shoulders, beyond that which had accrued over several days of blind interrogation.

"In this hearing of The City of Viridian Vs. Team Rocket, Deputy Inspector Jenny, representing the Department of Justice, will now present the case against the accused." The judge began, motioning to the pursuant side of the courtroom, and to the individual question.

The woman who stood was in hear early forties, trademark blue hair of her family line streaked with the silvery ribbon of telltale aging just over her ears. Her face showed all the obvious signs of half a lifetime of dedication to the force, and unsurprisingly, she carried the dignity and pride that came with that, not unlike the various other badges of distinction that adorned her uniform. She moved from her seat at the table across from them, to a podium forward of their respective positions.

The Deputy Inspector quietly unwrapped the twine which bound a file-folder in her posession shut, and opened the case-file to the desired page. When she opened her mouth, it was almost worse than a death-sentence. The accusations fell like massive columns of granite, and did not stop. They just kept falling, and the weight just kept building, and building over their heads. They had expected something bad, but not this!

"Your honor, it is in our findings that these three individuals unlawfully and covertly attempted to transport high-explosives equaling the destructive force of three and one half tons of dynamite into Viridian City limits."

There was an audible sound as Meowth's mouth fell open, to full expansion. A loud swallow from James did not go unnoticed, either.

"...and that they made said attempt willingly, and on the directive of Team Rocket, with the conspiratorial intention of causing conventional terror amongst the city's populace, through the grand destruction of both private and public property, the mass murder of it's people, or extortion thereof."

Jessie felt her face pale, and her hands wobble on the desk. She reached for the pitcher of water in front of himself, but James beat her to it. He looked like he was practically punch drunk at the revelation, and looking to hydrate himself after a bad hangover. She could see the black circles under his eyes darken as he filled his glass, and drank it all. A set of six claw marks scarred the hardwood table in front of Meowth. She shared a desperate look with them, before the deputy inspector continued.

"Before you, your honor, is photographic evidence of both the hidden compartment in which the explosive device was stored, and the vehicle in which it was transported. If you would turn to the second section, paragraph eight of the report, you will find a detailed transcript of the electronic exchange of funds from the time it passed through our offshore monitoring systems, to the time it was issued to the accused," the policewoman said, pausing to clear her throat. "We have corroborated these transcripts with receipts issued from the 1st Bank of Sinnoh, as found in the following article."

The judge, who had placed a set of brass-rimmed reading-glasses on his nose, flipped through the pages as had been requested of him. He studied them for just a brief moment, confirming that the aforementioned information was in fact contained therein. "Is there anything else you would like to add, Deputy Inspector?" he asked after silent consideration.

Jenny shook her head, and closed the file-folder at the podium."No your honor. With respect, and on behalf of the department, I believe this evidence speaks for itself. We are prepared to accept a plea bargain from the accused."

"The plaintiff rests." The judge acknowledged, as the Deputy Inspector took her seat. "The accused may now present their defense."

Archer, who was the lone occupant of their table who's expression had gone unchanged, stood, and confidently placed his hand on the table, raising his other to wisp away something that was not there, in a rather flamboyant characterization of his distaste for the argument presented against him. "Before I present the defense, I would like to move for a directed verdict of acquittal," he said plainly and clearly.

There was a murmur of discontent in the court and the judge peered out at him incredulously, over his glasses. "On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that insufficient evidence has been produced to identify the acts committed as those of an organization, real or imagined." He said, now casting his other hand into the air dismissively.

The judge shook his head sternly. "Denied, Mr. Archer. There is solid evidence of a financial transaction between the accused, a Johto bank account known to belong to former Team Rocket holdings, and now owned by your company. I would say that evidence is concrete enough to continue these proceedings. Please present your defense."

Archer nodded evenly, though he seemed to disagree. If he was upset about having his ploy shot down, he didn't show it. Instead he returned his hands to the table, and collected his briefcase, before striding smoothly to the podium. The sleek black case was laid on it's angled top, and loudly snapped open. Within, he produced three identical envelopes, and accompanying hunter-green filing cards, with typed script on them.

"I hold in my hands the primary copies of the duplicates that my office issued to this court in response to these allegations, last week. These are the original carbon-copies of signed letters of termination belonging to these three individuals," he swung his hand neatly backward over his shoulder at the stunned trio, who could only sit, and grasp at airy syllables.

"You'll find that they are dated first of June, four years ago, and were issued at that time by the the former owner of Silph Co., Mr. Giovanni. As such, there is an established precedent that these three are not, and have not been working in the employ or even _interest _of any such organization, for quite some time." Archer concluded, bringing a hand down on top of the briefcase as he passed the information forward, towards the Bench

The glass in James' hand clanked down onto the table through three inches of open air. Jessie inhaled deeply. What the fuck was _this_? That wasn't a defense! Even they were smart enough to see that. Things were happening too fast for her to process. She felt James and Meowth clamp down anxiously on her from either side, and tears of panic came to her eyes. She wanted to scream out, but what would she say? What could she possibly say that would rescind that? It was obvious that all three of them were probably fired many times, throughout their careers, and for all she knew, those documents were probably legitimate!

"I'll remind the court that it was determined one year ago," Archer began, "In this very room, no less, that neither Silph Co. nor any of it's shareholders, past _or_ present, were involved with this alleged_ Team Rocket _outfit-"

The judge cut across the CEO, with an authoritative tone. "And I will remind you, Mr. Archer, that you that case is not yet formally closed, and considered inadmissible-"

Archer merely continued, unabated. "A determination which Silph Co, and hopefully, this courtroom will continue to stand by-"

"One more, Mr. Archer, and I will hold you in contempt!" The judge threatened, over top the din of the courtroom, which had now become quite loud.

Archer smiled rather plainly and shook his head, continuing in a much quieter voice. "The defense rests." He retired from the podium, and retook his seat. What remained, however, was the loud murmuring that echoed throughout the room. The judge called for order, as the Rockets glared at their savior turned condemner, who said nothing to them in response. In fact, Archer sat very confidently, as though he didn't see that they existed at all.

James was the first to move, but something solid collided with the edge of his chair, as he moved to wrap his hands around Archer's throat, pinning him painfully and awkwardly between it and the table well short of his goal. It was a leg, which Jessie followed back to it's source, extended under the bar and into the first row of the courtroom gallery, just behind them. She just barely recognized the face, outside of it's typical Rocket vestments. Frustratingly, she could never remember the name of the fellow who owned it. Patch, or Biff, or Botch, or something of that nature. What she did recognize instantly, was the blonde-haired tramp next to him. Uniform or no, there was no mistaking that cold-blooded Seviper.

"_Cassidy_." she snarled venomously.

Over her shoulder, the gavel slammed down hard again, as recess was declared, drawing her attention away momentarily. She was amazed that no one seemed to notice what was going on. No one seemed to be paying any attention at all to them, as they stood to exit the court-room. When she looked back, it was into Archer's face, who had now turned to regard them demurely. Jessie glared back with more anger and intensity than she believed she ever had. "You—You-You-" She fumbled, for the first time in her life, it felt like, to find a proper insult. When none came, she spit out the point. "You sold us out!" she gasped , a notion to which James and Meowth both responded affirmatively.

Archer seemed amused if anything. "You're a nobody, Jessie" he laughed, with little irony. "Your cadre consists of a lap-pet reject, and a repressed homosexual. The only reason you weren't swept under the rug a long time ago, is because your mother was an asset to the organization, once upon a time. Be honest with yourself: Did you really ever imagine that the team would dedicate its resources to ensuring that you three non-contributing _zeroes_ would emerge from this unscathed?" When her partners shrank away at his insults, she grabbed onto them supportively.

Unbothered by their support for one another, Archer reached out and prodded the patch on Jessie's jacket. "My intention was never to defend you from this. My job is and always has been to protect the interests of Silph Co., while insulating Team Rocket, and Giovanni from any further scrutiny. The fact that you brought this on yourself is unfortunate, if not regrettable. Were the Team to be implicated however, it would be catastrophic. Consider yourself acceptable losses, if it makes you feel better. Otherwise we'll just call it corporate downsizing."

If his callousness was not enough to inspire action, his mention of her mother, on top of that, was certainly enough. She flew out of her seat, and so did Meowth, unlike James, who was still pinned down, both cocked to strike, but something small and black cut between them, causing them to lose their focus.

A twin set of gleaming blue gemstones adorned the tiny figure as it crouched, unseen in the shadows behind the table, it's Mean Look attack rendering them motionless. Cassidy's Sableye. Grudgingly, Archer's attackers withdrew.

"Forgive me. I prefer to handle matters in a more civilized way, but perhaps my associates and I did not make this as clear as we should have." Archer gently reached toward his lapel, and jerked it softly to the side, revealing the grip of a firearm. He nodded his head slightly to the side at Cassidy, who patted a bulge in her jacket and nudged Butch, who did the same. Looking around desperately, the trio was distraught when no one in the gallery saw, or at least, when everyone _pretended_ not to. He nodded in the direction of the recess hall to their side of the courtroom, and stood for them all to lead the way.

"Now, either we come back out of there, and you take the fall for all these nice people to see and walk out of here in police custody, _or you don't walk out at all_."

* * *

Ash felt like the luckiest person alive. Though it was distracting him a bit from his duties, it simply couldn't wait any longer.

After digging around in his backpack, hoping to find a package of snack-crackers that had perhaps gone missed, he'd found a five pokedollar bill folded up in the hem of his cap he'd stuffed in on top of it all earlier when Looker had insisted he don his disguise. Even though it was just some small sum of money, tucked away for some long ago forgotten contingency, he felt like he'd won the lottery. He couldn't remember when or for what reason he'd have put it in there, but maybe he was going to have to give himself a little more credit for foresight!

He clasped the currency tightly in his fist, as he backtracked down a street he'd stalked earlier in the day. The sun was setting and it was getting difficult to find his way around, but he was almost positive this is where he'd passed the place: When he finally came across it, he nearly got himself run over dashing across the street. He barreled into the door, at first, and backed up, before noticing the word 'PULL' embossed on it's handle. He stopped to snort at Pikachu who was busy rubbing his nose, having similarly expected the door to open inward. Earlier in the day, he was sure, this would have turned into an argument. Instead, they both shared a laugh at their own stupidity, happy that they had finally found the means to feed themselves, and corrected their mistake, as they stepped into the Poke Mart.

The bell jingling over the door, did nothing to draw Mark out of his consternation, as he stood slumped over the register, staring off into space. These past few days had not been kind of him. He was confident that the worst the city had to offer had been in and out of his aisles since Monday. It made him sick to his stomach that not only was he being forced to cater to such clientele, broker to them illegal and unwholesome goods, aside, he had been forced to sit and watch idle while they stuffed their pockets with whatever they thought they could pilfer out from under his nose. The men in the truck had taken all his Pokemon, after all. These losses were better taken with a deficit to one's book-keeping, than with a knife to his gut.

Still, though, it was maddening to watch his business, _his family birth-right_ picked apart piece by piece. But what were his options? What could he really do? Nothing, without angering those men, who had all the bargaining power, all the leverage. Those men who knew where he lived, had stolen his Pokemon, shanghaied his business, and killed for fun, as he imagined it. They could make him do whatever they wanted!

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice, stern and hearty from his childhood, spoke back at those bleak thoughts, though. It was a deep, and commanding baritone. The voice of his late father, a true Sayso if ever there had been one. If there was the one thing he remembered his father telling him, it was this. It had been almost twenty years ago, and the Sayso Mart had been put under a great deal of pressure in the economic hard-times to change over to the franchise ownership, and change its name. And, after a good many ups and downs, and a rather embarrassing bankruptcy, in some capacities, it had done those things... Though, in some very crucial capacities it hadn't. The name had gone, of course, but the Poke Mart was still a Sayso-owned establishment. The words he remembered his father leaving him with, that day, before he had gone to speak with the representatives of Poke Mart International, were these:

"It may be a raw deal, son. But Saysos never take _anything_ laying down."

And it was so, that he'd spent the past hour devising his desperate plan. If he could do nothing to discourage the men who were forcing him to sell this trash, he would discourage those who were buying it. He'd wait for the next person to come up to him, flashing that infuriating little smirk they all seemed to have, and ask him if there was any Rare Candy to be had. Then he'd smile back! Oh yes, he'd pretend everything was fine and dandy, all right! He'd smile, and say 'Sure thing, let's step into the back,' and then he'd point into the unloading dock, of course, and say, 'After you, pal.' And then he'd grab the old pipe-wrench he used to knock ice off the loading ramp in the winter, and bust them over the gantry! What happened from there, well-

"Hey, mister!" Ash cried from the back. "How much is this? It says they're on sale!" A gloved hand held a Rage candy bar aloft over the merchandize display, and waggled it about for his inspection.

Mark's mouth felt dry. He hadn't had a real customer at all today. The new patronage was beginning to scare them away. He licked his lips and thought through the weekly sale prices, before answering. "Yea. Five for a pokedollar," he managed, weakly.

"Oh, sweet _Arceus_!" Ash celebrated, and Mark could hear a great raking of wrappers, before the shopper emerged from his vantage, clutching a heap of the chocolate bars. He almost laughed, at the odd little fellow, as he slapped down the fiver like it was made of gold, and proceeded to unabashedly tear into one of the confections, and shove it completely into his mouth, handing another to the Pikachu at his side.

Mark hit the sale key on the register, and put the bill into the drawer. "Need a receipt?"

Ash swallowed hard, trying to clear his throat of the gooey caramel. "Nawp," he managed around a mouth-full of chocolate.

"Have a nice day, then." Mark said, and gave the best approximation of a smile that he felt he could manage.

"Yawp." Ash enunciated as he crammed another Rage into his face, and exited.

He closed his eyes as soon as he emerged into the open air, and tilted his head back. What a lucky break, he thought. Not only had he found some emergency cash, but he'd been able to stretch it a mile. He took up a spot on the pavement outside, and set about stuffing his bounty into the recesses of his backpack. He kept one additional candy bar for himself, of course, and one for Pikachu as well, that was a given. The rest, however insanely delicious, would have to be rationed carefully.

As he appropriated the snacks and stood back up to his full height, he took note of a large sale flier pasted to the outside of the Poke Mart window.

"Best Deals in Town?" it read, and he chuckled while he flicked a piece of sticky wrapper from his finger. Ash thought it was kind of funny, considering he'd just walked out of there with a kings ransom. Didn't seem like the matter was still in question, to him. As he looked closer, though, he noted that the question mark was painted on over top of a preexisting exclamation point. Someone had put it there as a joke, he guessed. Kind of a cruel thing to do, he thought. The place seemed alright to him. He enjoyed the last few chocolatey bites before he turned to leave, but something stopped him cold.

_Question mark, _he thought. A sense of deja vu swept over him, and he blinked. Beside him, Pikachu tugged roughly at a paw-full of his pant-leg.

"Pika, Piiiikaaaa." his partner urged him, pointing at the flier.

"_Oh, and it's also the same plant that produces Enigma Berries, so named for their distinctive 'question mark' pattern." _He remembered telling Pikachu, some hours earlier.

He pounded his fist into his palm suddenly. _Maybe_, he thought.

Pikachu in tow, he marched back into the door, again, forgetting to pull, before correcting himself. Standing in the doorway, he adjusted his tuque, checked his sunglasses down his nose a bit, and regarded the cashier just as Looker has instructed.

"Hey man," he began, in a drawl. "You got any Rare Candy?"

Though Mark had been mentally practicing just what he would say, the small look that he betrayed before switching to a jovial, inviting expression was more than enough to tell Ash that he was in the right place.

* * *

A/N: If you're still reading, I appreciate it! Next bit sometime soon.


	5. Chapter V

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary:With the case against the illegal traffickers coming to a tense climax, Ash tries to keep himself dedicated to the case. How will things pan out? Will Team Nebula make good on their promise, or will Looker and his deputy uphold the law?

A/N: More action than seen previously; making up for lost time. Also, I think this is the longest entry yet. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter V**

"Forgive and Forget"

"Sure thing." Mark said with forced tolerance. He'd been caught off guard. After all, he would have never expected someone so young to come looking to purchase, but it hardly made any difference. It just went to show you how far down the community had slipped, since he was a kid. If some dumb delinquent had to leave here with a busted head, to go spread the word to all his dumb friends that Mark Sayso wouldn't stand for this, then he was doing the world a favor. He just hoped his nephew hadn't fallen in with the same crowd.

He wouldn't swing as hard, he decided. Just enough to rattle his brains a little.

Mark tensed his quaking hand, before making a show of peering over the counter at the little yellow Pokemon who stood at his side. Hardly seemed a threat, really, but he didn't need anyone or anything complicating this matter. His nerves were already shot as it was. "You gotta leave all your Pokemon out here, though."

The youngster didn't seem to like that idea very much. "For what?" he asked, taking up an incredulous tone.

"I've been getting buyers in lately who've tried to strong-arm me. I'm trying to run a legitimate business here," Mark said with a practiced ease.

Ash narrowed his eyes. He had to have evidence, he remembered. Looker had been very specific about that point. Rushing back to the investigator to tattle wasn't going to prove anything, and even if he was their man, he'd probably just hide it all if Ash cut and ran now. But if he gave up his Pokemon, how did he know that Mark wouldn't strong-arm_ him?_

"Alright, you want me to leave Pikachu here. How do I know you're gonna play fair?" he asked, tilting his head to the side theatrically.

Mark hadn't considered that anyone would be skeptical of his arrangement, but he'd spent far too much time considering his plan for it to fall apart at his feet. "You sure seemed to like those Rage candy bars." Mark stated, leading him in confidence despite the fact that he was panicking . When Ash perked, he continued offering elucidation to the statement. "I'll cut you a deal on a whole gross of them, if you leave your Pokemon out here, and don't start any funny-business."

Ash didn't know how many a gross was, but he imagined that it was a sufficient amount to find something disgusting and no longer want to eat it, which was a butt-load of candy bars in his case, since he really liked chocolate. He didn't notice the fact that he was essentially being bribed into letting his guard down. He'd already completely forgot that he was going to arrest this person, and that even if the deal went through, he was still broke. Still, he nodded approvingly and looked down towards his partner before unbuckling his belt, and draping it over the electric type like a bandoleer. "Wait out here for just a minute, huh?"

Pikachu looked worried and 'Chuu'ed appropriately at him, but he winked in response, showing clearly that he remembered what he was here to do. "No worries." He said, careful no to sound too much like he was up to something. "I'll be back soon."

When he stood back up, Mark ushered him towards the door marked 'Employees Only' with both hands, and he compliantly followed.

When they entered the loading dock, each party undertook a flurry of motion, unbeknownst to the other. Mark revolved in place and very quietly turned the deadbolt until he heard it clack shut, and rushed through the rest of his task, fearful that the soft noise had exposed him. Ash was unaware however, working on removing the materials Looker had supplied him with from the inside of his jacket, after having spotted just what he was after: unmarked crates, and the tell-tale blue wrappers, which Looker had told him to be on the lookout for since day one. He was very pleased that for once, something looked just like he expected it would.

Mark had the wrench up off the floor where he kept it propped against the door and in his hand when they finally turned on each-other, reaching out to get ahold of the young trainer so as to keep him in striking distance. He couldn't have foreseen that that very wrist which jittered nervously in the space between them would have a set of handcuffs clapped over it. Ash didn't seem to have included the off hand pipe-wrench in his plans either, however, so now he forgot his delivery, and held up the shield-shaped badge, ironically wishing that it was full-sized as Mark, now too pumped up on his own adrenaline to back out of what was happening, swung hard at his head with the improvised bludgeon.

"Ow!" Ash cried as the heavy instrument cracked across his knuckles, sending the badge flying from his grip and pain shooting through his hand. As his attacker made an indecipherable noise of panic and anger at having missed and wheeled back to strike again, Ash tucked his head and circled behind, pulling the arm he was cuffed to behind him, unintentionally tangling Mark up with his own limbs.

"Hey!" Ash yelped, as Mark pivoted back in the opposite direction and swung in a spiral, which he was narrowly able to duck beneath.

"Woah! Stop!" he pleaded again as he kept circling, dodging another swing of the implement. Mark just kept coming, shouting unintelligibly.

"You're gonna hurt someone!" Ash shouted as the clerk took another swing, this time catching the hook of the wrench on the leading edge of a storage shelf, jerking it and a dozen boxes of colorfully-wrapped goods to the floor. Ash didn't realize how ignorant he sounded, since that was obviously the crazed man's intention.

"I said knock it off!" Ash snarled, trying to interpose a leg into their skirmish in order to create some distance. It turned out to be another error in judgment, since they were handcuffed together and Mark merely proceeded to bat the offending limb upward with his off hand, dumping the trainer unceremoniously to the floor.

Mark was bearing down on him, wrench held high over his head. Ash tried to hold the incensed man away from him by kicking at his hips, desperately looking around for something to get ahold of, either to pull himself to his feet or to bring to bear in his defense, but all he was able to find was his badge which he palmed with a desperate slap, before holding it prominently in front of his face as a last resort."Hey!" he screamed desperately.

"_HEY_!" He repeated, his voice raised considerably by desperate panic as Mark continued to try and pass between his legs and strike. "You're swinging at an officer, here!"

The look of realization on Mark's face as he looked between the badge and the face of his adversary, if there was one, was quickly replaced with a look of surprise as the door to the storage room exploded off it's hinges. Ash's Tauros, with a powerful lowing bellow charged into the store-room, Pikachu hanging from it's horns for dear life and Ash was only able to stop them by scrambling desperately to his feet and throwing himself in front of the combined Horn Attack and Volt Tackle maneuver, which needless to say, deposited both of the brawlers to the floor in a sooted and bruised state, even though the attacks were cut short for his sake. Ash imagined that it was better than being dragged along for the ride, as Mark went sailing into and possibly through the dock-door, and that it would probably take a lot less explaining to justify the electricity-burnt tuque and busted glasses than it would an electricity-burnt perp with busted bones, too.

Still, it didn't make his head spin any less, when he had to roll over onto his suspect turned attacker and impose as much weight as he could on the hand that held the pipe-wrench, pinning the wrist sloppily under his knee before yanking the tool from the clerks grip and throwing it as far away as he could manage.

Too rocked by the attack and realization of what he'd actually come close to doing, Mark could scarcely have managed to fight off the persistent youth even if he had wanted to. Had he not been trapped in a downward spiral of on-setting dread and sorrow, he might have wondered where the young trainer was still pulling energy from, his own limbs now quite lethargic after the desperate struggle and high-voltage impact. None of that seemed to matter anymore though, as he felt himself being rolled onto his chest and the other cuff being undone. Ash re-bound it to his opposite hand very tightly, before being shoving Mark back over and on top of them.

Seemingly dazed, Ash managed to hold up the badge once again to his face and tell him clearly: "You're under arrest." The trainer stopped to heave a breath, the badge sinking slowly back to the floor. "And you have miranda rights," he finished, after huffing again and shrugged his shoulders uncertainly.

Something like that, Ash thought. He remembered Looker telling him it was very important to say that. And with those words spoken and his work all complete, he finally slumped back onto his haunches and caught his breath. He'd need to get ahold of Looker now and get the ball rolling on this investigation. Ash decided though, as he could barely muster the required motions from his trembling hands to dig in his jacket for his poke gear, that _his_ work as an investigator was done.

He'd had enough. Getting his head nearly taken off just didn't seem to be the job perk he was hoping for to be honest, and fighting for his life against drug-dealers didn't seem like the sort of thing most people sought out in an occupation, or in his case, even a past-time. He felt his whole body quaking as the adrenaline dump set in.

When he accidentally dropped the 'gear from his quivering fingers and went to go retrieve it, he felt something bump him from behind. He turned to see Tauros' large muzzle pushing into his backpack, and Pikachu staring down at him with no small measure of concern. He managed a smile to let them know that he was alright. "You do that?" he asked, sticking out his thumb slightly at the Bull Pokemon. Someone had to of let him out of his poke ball after all. In all likelihood, the move had saved his life. When Pikachu nodded, Ash nodded back approvingly.

"Nice work, partner," he offered in thanks, before reaching up to give Tauros a wavering pat on his nose. "You too, tough guy."

* * *

"Are you sure you two are real police?" Mark asked finally, cutting between the tense conversation the young trainer who had arrested him and this new arrival were having, timidly. Too timidly, apparently, since neither seemed to notice.

"Okay, I got our guy. I'm done with this investigation stuff. It's over."

"Well, that's just it. This isn't over." Looker clarified, wiggling the man's wallet which he had been busying himself with looking through, as though that entirely explained the nature of the thing. When Ash gave him a blank look, he continued. "Mark Sayso. Thirty-three. Small business owners association, member of the local gardening club," he listed off, looking through cards contained in within. "We've still got to find the traffickers, the guys bringing this stuff in. This guy is _clearly_ just a front-man."

"Well, it's over for me." Ash said plainly as he buckled his belt back on, completing the transformation back to his old self by swapping out the tacked-on elements of his disguise with his league cap, re-shaping the bill with a quick flex between his fingers. "I did what I said I'd do. I didn't sign up for _this_."

"Ash, come on now." Looker said chastisingly. "Don't try to make it seem like I didn't warn you."

Ash shook his head and sighed, glancing over at Pikachu who seemed likewise displeased. "You said it _could_ be dangerous," he clarified. "Not that I was gonna wind up almost getting my _face_ re-arranged with a _monkey-wrench_, okay?"

"Well," Looker began in compromise, "I also didn't tell you to make the arrest by yourself." The investigator crossed his arms. "That said, I think you did an amazing job, Ketchum." Looker paused to nod approvingly. "The due diligence you showed by making him lead you to the evidence, as opposed to making an unlawful arrest in the front of the store. The fact alone that you were able to apprehend him-" They both jumped as the door behind them crashed to the floor from where Ash had hastily propped it in it's jamb before Looker had arrived. "-with only _minimal_ collateral damage." He tilted his head subjectively, re-wording his praise to fit the scenario. "And most importantly without serious injury to either you or the perp, is something to consider."

Ash heaved a sigh. He could tell he was being buttered up, but he supposed there was a pearl of truth there. He _had_ sort of jumped the gun, where the arrest itself was concerned and had still managed to come out of it relatively intact. Still though, there was no sense in pushing it. Nearly getting arc-welded last week and now having almost gotten a brain-cleaning from yet another piece of mechanic's equipment told him not to test how far his luck would stretch, lest he meet his death by belt-sander.

"I never meant..." Mark spoke up now, slumped against the dock-door with his arms still solidly cuffed behind his back. His voice drew the attention of both his captors and now he was not sure that he wanted it. There were a million different thoughts coursing through his head, not the least of which was his desperate, overwhelming fear.

Yes, he'd just got into a tousle with the youngest plain-clothes officer he'd ever heard of. Yes, he'd just been arrested for possession and they were likely to peg him with distribution as well. Yes, he was probably going to be put away for a long, long time. But what he found most concerning, what now etched itself into mind more than anything was the singular, overwhelming fear, that those men who had forced all of this on his shoulders, would make good on their promise. In the scenario he imagined, it had seemed something of a moot point, and he didn't know why.

What had been his plan in that regard? Brain some unlucky junkie, and then stand proud like a hero while all his problems disappeared into the shadows they'd crawled out of? Yea, right, he thought. At least before this had happened, there had been some possibility, some remote chance that even if those men tried to seek retribution against him, he could just go collect his son quickly and quietly from daycare without anyone noticing, and be gone before they had a chance to stop him. Sure, in prison he'd be safe from them, But what would they do now, they found out he'd been arrested, and all their valuable goods and profits impounded? What would he have to live with? What would he be forced to watch happen from behind bars, in response to this enormous error? How could he possibly protect his family from them!

"I never meant for anything like this to happen." he repeated, before continuing. Mark barely realized he was crying, it had been so long. Not since around the time his wife had passed away, yet now he could feel the teardrops rolling down under his chin and he was afforded very little modesty, being unable to wipe them away. "I never wanted any of this. Everything just got so out of control, so fast," he moaned. "I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never even wanted to sell this stuff! I was just so scared, and they didn't give me any choice. Now I've fucked everything up."

Ash supposed this was the part where a real police officer would get tough, try to strike up a one-ended bargain, so as to get the perp to stick his neck out and roll over on the people he was working for. He wasn't a real police officer though, so he didn't find himself quite as inclined as he likely should have been, to do that. Ash figured he was probably just about as sympathetic a person as anyone could be. Even if that someone had almost gotten their head caved in. So naturally, he was forward before Looker could react to the display and unlocking the man's cuffs long enough for him to get them back out in front of himself, before re-closing them a little more loosely than his anger and zeal had caused him to earlier.

He didn't really want to offer up his lucky handkerchief, simply because he didn't want to have to recollect it later (or worse, have to clean someone else's snot out of it) but decided he probably ought to anyways, just out of decency. His hand bumped into the hastily discarded tuque first much to his relief and he figured that it was good enough, so withdrew and offered _it_ instead. Mark took it and proceeded to clean his face off with the singed wool cap, using the ball of his palm on other areas closer to his eyes, so as to afford them a gentler swabbing. When Ash felt like the worst was over he cleared his throat a bit to speak. "Why don't you explain what's been going on here." He requested gently. He felt like his conscience was trying to force him to say that they could do something to help him, but he wasn't sure he could make that claim since it wasn't his decision, and he didn't want to tell a lie on principle.

Mark buttoned up though, and shook his head. "I can't. It'll just make things worse." He'd been told explicitly what would happen if he ratted them out to the police. He wasn't sure it was going to make a lick of difference one way or another, but for the sake of his son, he couldn't push this farther than it had already gone.

Looker, who had chosen to recline slightly against this far wall, made an allowing gesture toward Ash as he'd turned to him. He was curious to see how Ash would handle this. The kid had good instincts when it came to sleuthing even if he wasn't the brightest in the world, and Looker knew that he was bound to find out that he was even better on the interrogation end, as well. There was a lot more to be gained sometimes, just by simple acts of decency and kindness, than from abuse. Even though it was quite obvious the scuffle had shaken his deputized appointee, the readiness and speed with which he'd taken to this after claiming to have withdrawn himself from the situation fully, was a solid indicator that he would come back around to the idea.

Ash turned back to Mark, and settled back onto his haunches similarly to how he had earlier, though now in a more relaxed capacity. "I'm only seeing this from the outside here," he admitted, after considering the situation. "If I don't know more about what's going on, I can't do anything for you." Ash ended the statement with an upward inflection as he looked back over his shoulder toward the investigator, posing it to his superior as a question. Looker shrugged and made another motion that suggested tentative approval.

Mark started to cry again and Ash tried to smush down the feeling of pity that rose up in him. He needed to get something from this guy. Sitting here and patting his back while he boo-hooed wasn't going to help him fix anything._ Though, wasn't __**that **__calling the kettle black_. He thought with a frown. He heaved a sigh, and glanced at Pikachu, who let out an apprehensive "Chuu..." in response to his look. He wasn't just sitting around and doing nothing about his problems, though. He was making an effort to fix them, at least. So, with a moment of thought, he resolved that some solid advice would jump-start that process similar to how it had with him. Luckily, this situation seemed far simpler than his own, at least from a moral standpoint, so he felt that he could do his part to enlighten Mark.

"So what then, are you just going to let this happen?" Ash asked, his tone taking on a much more forceful inflection. "You're just going to go to take the rap for them? They're gonna walk away from this if that's what you decide to do. Probably just gonna do the same thing to someone else once you're gone, you know," he continued, more quietly than he'd began. "Maybe to someone you care about." Ash could tell he'd hit the nail on the head or at least come close enough, as Mark looked up from his hands and into the young trainer's face, with a torn expression. "You need to do the right thing, Mark."

_Just a little more, _Looker thought. _Just a little more, and we can all walk away from this with what we __want. We need those men you're protecting, and I know you don't want to protect them!_

When Mark did not respond, it was Ash who cut through the din of silence. "Are you going to take that lying down?"

The words came out of Ash's mouth almost automatically, as though prompted by something else. The effect was so surprising to Looker alone that he felt his brow kink up and had to forcibly resist the urge to criticize his query. Even more surprising, was the devastating effect they achieved. Mark, at first, reared back in the same sort of shock that he had but then, whereas his surprise had lingered and turned to confusion, Mark's had somehow turned to realization and then consideration, which if anything, added to his own feelings of bewilderment.

"My son." Mark said at last, after seeming to mill over what had been said to him. Ash looked back to Looker, who dropped a long accordion-style photo-protector from the center of the trifold wallet and turned it for inspection, with a satisfied smile. Ash could see the resemblance easily, even from this distance. "I'll tell you everything, as long as you can promise me that you'll keep him safe -And my nephew. They said they'd kill all three of us if I went to the police!" he hurriedly added.

Looker rummaged through the wallet, searching for something that he'd earlier passed up. A business card. He withdrew it and read the name out loud. "Sunstone Boulevard Daycare Center?"

"Yea," Mark confirmed.

"Is he there now?"

"Yea."

"And what about your nephew?"

"He should be in for his evening shift in just a f-few hours."

"Alright, I'll go and do that, right now. Ash, I need you to stick this out with me." Looker locked his gaze on his deputy as he tossed the wallet at him.

When Ash caught it, he forgot his wonderment and his face became a mask of consternation. He had just told Looker he was done, hadn't he? It wasn't as though things were just going to get easier from here on out. Still, though, it seemed like he'd just had an amazing burst of inspiration, and the more and more he thought about it, he just couldn't get used to the idea of walking away from this. If Looker didn't really need him to finish this, he doubted the investigator would say so. As usual, he looked at Pikachu for affirmation, who nodded and gave him a miniature thumbs up for his effort. He sucked in a breath, feeling not so much thrilled with the situation as swept up in it, and nodded his head finally to the police agent. "I'll do it."

"Till this is over?" Looker asked, cautiously.

"Till this is over," Ash repeated, in pledge

"Well, then here's the plan..."

* * *

"I'm bored as hell," Doc commented. "You wanna battle or somethin'?"

Holidays eyes slid over to his partner as though there were something sticky inside his skull impeding their progress. His response was a healthy portion of apathy and distaste measured out in equal amounts. "No."

"How much longer is this shit gonna last?" Doc asked, rubbing his eyes. "Ican't feel my ass anymore," he moaned, shifting uncomfortably in the leather driver's seat.

"When the boss calls us, with a bearing on the kid," Holiday answered with a sigh.

"When is that gonna be?" Doc whined.

"Whenev-" He went to launch a rebuke but stopped short and reached into his pocket. "Maybe right now," Holiday noted, his ire evaporating completely at the prospect.

The caller ID returned a local caller though, and he tried not to betray a groan. Truthfully, he wanted to be back on the move as well, being no more willing than his partner to take up residence in a moving-van and live the life of a vagrant, but he maintained a strict display of indifference. At any rate, this was not the boss calling to give them new orders. Thumbing the button and pressing the phone to his face, he clicked his tongue.

"How did you get this number?"

A voice on the other end warbled uncertainly. "Er, uh..." Mark stuttered. Truthfully, they had just used the directory redial service, but how exactly did you go about telling drug-dealers that you had *69'd them without breaching etiquette? He wasn't sure. Then again, his accomplice for this particular task, the younger deputy, didn't exactly seem certain of himself either.

Mark held the register phone loosely in his left hand, his right handcuffed to the handle of the cash safe behind the counter which was simply for the sake of their continued custody over him, he'd been assured. On the opposite end of the store, Ash clutched the stock-room phone, fighting silently with a tangle of cord that lead back through the double-doors.

Abbb the list of things Looker had instructed him to listen for. Noticeable accents, offhanded comments, background noise, et cetera, in an attempt to glean whatever he could about them and their whereabouts. It seemed very overwhelming to Ash as he listened with his palm mashed hard over the receiver. He didn't head anything other than a hard, cold insult and utter, angry silence. In a slight panic, he held out a hand at Mark and spun it rapidly in a circle, urging him to quickly continue.

"I don't!-Er-I didn't, rather," Mark managed finally, forcing the words from his mouth. "I just re-dialed you is all."

There was a sound on the other end like a grunt of displeasure and then the voice of the speaker gained a tinny, almost far-away quality. Ash wondered if they'd just been put on speakerphone. He had a nasty feeling that this was going to quickly out of control again without Looker there to support him. Admittedly, there was very little time for preparation, what with the matter so far out of hand as it was, but it didn't take a genius to realize that he was left holding the bag, here.

"The fuck you want, then?" The voice went on, and Mark turned to him desperately for a preconstructed answer. Ash only shook his head helplessly though, and there was another long chain of 'um's before he came up with a poor substitute of his own.

"The goods are all gone, here, g-guys. The register is stuffed." Mark lied, eventually finding himself in familiar salesman territory. "It's been flying off the shelves, _really_." He finished, as smoothly as he could and looked to Ash for some measure of support. The young deputy only widened his eyes, and strained to hear.

There was a moment or two of silence. Holiday, on the other end was doing his mental math. The prescribed sales figures that had just been eluded to were exorbitant and that was certainly good for them, but that hardly changed the fact that they were inordinate. He was perfectly willing to admit that his idea to push the goods through the local convenience store was so brilliant that it bared repeating but statistically, it seemed unlikely that they'd outpaced their more experienced predecessors by such a staggering degree.

"Huh." He noted, as he held his gear away from himself and glanced over at his partner gaugingly. He supposed it _was_ possible and Doc did seem to like the idea of getting another shot at his 'icy depart'. "Well, I guess we'll be there to deliver the next shipment, won't we? Who knew you'd be such a good little mule?" He finished scathingly.

Mark felt his eyebrows crinkle defensively. He was the descendant of an entrepreneurial genius, not to mention twelve-time franchise employee of the year – with all the bonuses and incentives which that implied! Had the economic collapse at the beginning of the previous decade not reared it's ugly head, he'd be at the end of a long line of self-made millionaires! He'd be wiping these people off the bottom of his six hundred dollar, tailor-made oxfords! Mark Sayso was nobody's stooge, and he certainly wasn't a _mule._

"That sounds great." He said through clenched teeth before he caught sight of Ash waving desperately and shaking his head violently. As Mark grasped at the syllables to rescind his invitation, the young deputy completed the display with a sharp and violent dragging of his free hand across his neck, complete with expression of adamant displeasure.

Inviting the perps here to make an arrest in such a confined space with no help what so ever, sounded like an idea on par with his previous attempt at playing hard-boiled detective; an idea which had nearly ended in amateur brain-surgery, and one which he was so completely _over. _If it meant scrapping the idea they were trying at present in favor of a less expedient one or out and out waiting for Looker to return and do it himself, then that was what was going to happen. Mark seemed like a nice enough guy and he'd still turned into a raving lunatic when backed against the wall. So what exactly could he hope to expect from hardened criminals? Then again, he thought with slight embarassment, this time he wouldn't have to leave his Pokemon _in the other room_. He was rather glad that Looker hadn't been made wise to that particular detail of the situation. He had a feeling that the investigator's opinion of his work would decline somewhat.

"Er, actually, you know what-" Mark looked around desperately, as he spoke. "I forgot there was another box back here." He reached out at the full extension that his cuffs would allow for a plastic shopping basket and slammed it roughly against the counter-top, so as to simulate the sound of the lid being lifted from the crate, Ash suspected. It didn't sound too much like that to him, but he hoped it would prove sufficient. There was another long stretch of silence before the voice on the other line spoke.

"Then what the fuck are you wasting our time for, dildo?" There was a small sound somewhere behind all of the venomous overtones and Ash picked up on it only so faintly. When the line went dead and Marcus laid his end of the receiver down, Ash was still clutching his, perfectly motionless and silent as he scrambled his brains trying to think of what the noise might have been.

"Did you hear some-" Mark began, but Ash made another angry shushing gesture and blinked rapidly as the answer came to him. He wiggled his fingers to aid in the process. When the dial tone rang in his ear, he slammed down the receiver, and slapped his hand against the wall in victorious recollection.

"A Pidgeot!"

Mark's eyebrows flattened in displeasure. "A Pidgeot? You know Pidgeot cries can be heard for miles, right? It's not like you can zero in on just any old Pidgeot."

"But that's the thing- it's not just_ any_ Pidgeot!" Ash cried in excitement. "It's _my_ Pidgeot!"

"They're in the Viridian Forest!" Ash exclaimed, all the vivid memories of his wayside flying-type whom he'd parted ways with long before, even previous to his trip to the Orange Islands, making him smile brightly. He'd left Pidgeot behind to defend the Pidgey flock there and vowed to one day return. He guessed today was that day! Caught up in the rush of discovery and the possibility of reuniting with one of his Pokemon, Ash bolted through the door of the Poke Mart in the greatest display of shortsightedness he'd yet given, leaving Mark cuffed to the safe with nothing but a look of disbelief.

Holiday, a good but perhaps not _so_ vast distance away, regarded his partner with a similar expression. He knew better than to suppose that their selected middle-man had called them simply for a chat, especially since everything about him suggested he hated not only their guts, but this situation entirely. Furthermore, there was the simple matter of Mark being a purportedly excellent businessman, which if anything, he supposed may have served as a counter to his initial misgivings- businessmen did like making money, after all. More than that, though, it painted the man as someone who generally had his shit together, ergo: someone who ought to have had a pretty good idea how much stock he had, regardless of whether it was contraband or not. "Something's not right," he noted.

Doc wasn't listening to him, though. He seemed more concerned with the flying type who'd perched on the hood of the truck and was now eyeballing them boldly out of the side of it's head in the way birds often do, as though regarding with divided interest. This was the third time today the Pidgeot had inspected them through the glass as though they were zoo-creatures on display. It didn't seem to like the fact that they were here very much at all. Holiday didn't care though. To him it was just another nuisance. He cleared his throat loudly at Doc, who turned to regard him in a way that _he_ so often seemed to, as though he were regarding with divided interest, and Holiday was not at all surprised.

"Huh?"

"Our mule is up to something," Holiday explained.

"Oh yea?" Doc piqued his eyebrows but Holiday could see that he was looking around the cabin for his backpack to acquire an empty poke ball.

"Yea, but don't be concerned or anything. I'm sure it'll just get way out of hand," Holiday leaned back into his seat and crossed his arms with a very poorly concealed expression of contempt. Of all the things he hated, being ignored was one of them.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Doc said, finally procuring the item of his desire from the side-pocket of a black and green carrier bag. "You worry too much." The muscular Admin jerked his thumb in the direction of the flying type just before them. "You should relax more," he suggested, holding out the poke ball, offering up the opportunity to capture to his partner. "Why don't you take the time to stop and catch a Pokemon, instead of stressing out?"

"No thanks," Holiday waved him off with disinterest, officially giving him leave to do as he pleased.

* * *

"You're already _what,_" Looker gasped. "You found them already? Seriously?"

Ash didn't like the exact tone of surprise he heard over the phone, which suggested expectations of failure as opposed to pleasant surprise, but he muscled past it for the time being. "I got a lucky break," he explained. "I need some backup, though. I don't know if I can handle this myself. I think they're hiding out in the forest outside of town."

His hypothesis seemed to be correct, and not simply coincidence at that, both of which had been pretty rare so far. He'd located the truck Mark had described but it didn't seem as though anything was going on. The cabin was dark and the engine was off. Still, he wasn't going to approach the vehicle until he had some support. He was thankful that he'd found such a good hiding spot in the bushes.

"I ran into some hangups at the daycare center." Looker said with a frown. Currently, that meant that he was filling out forms and waiting for a confirmation that he wasn't sure was going to come, at the expense of having to dig himself out of another legal pitfall. Though, he supposed a foreign accent and a face nobody in the establishment had ever seen before, looking for a child he had to review his case notes to even name, was probably not the biggest indicator of trustworthiness. Already they had called Mark, who had backed it up, of course, but being that he wasn't here to actually say so in person, it was looking a little dicey at the moment. He chose to keep the particulars to himself, however. "I'll get there as soon as I can."

Ash put his arm across his face to shield his face from the sudden burst of light as a powerful set of high-beams flipped on in front of him and cut through the shrubbery, revealing him and his partner. He blinked and glanced around at his surroundings, wondering desperately what had given him away. He almost instantly blew out a sigh and stepped pointlessly out of the way of the large gap in the hedge that made his sneakers clearly visible, cursing himself for not seeing it before. "Soon would be good," he said and hung up, bravely stepping out into the clearing.

"Told you," Holiday said with a frown as both Admins looked on from the darkened cabin in something between apprehension and assumption. Doc knew that it didn't bode well that the kid was here. Holiday believed that the situation had literally gone from bad, to worse. They both knew they would have to tread very lightly at this point to break even, though if they even made it out without sacrificing either their cover or their assignment, they'd be very surprised.

"So now what?" Doc asked, leaning back a bit in his seat, the tone of his voice giving silent acknowledgment that his partner had been correct.

"I''m working on it, I'm working on it." Holiday groaned, as he rolled out of the seat and ducked into the back. He pulled his pokegear from his pocket and dialed out as he looked around for the large plastic container he'd seen earlier. He found it after a very short rummage. The words "**HIGHLY FLAMMABLE**" were printed in safety-yellow letters down the side of it. He didn't have any fire-types and he would need Doc to busy himself with other matters, so it would have to do. The line rang five times and then was picked up by a smooth, masculine voice on the other end.

"Why are you calling me?" The voice said quietly and evenly, though the weight of it's underlying tone was not missed. No, not missed at all, Holiday thought, though he was hardly worried. The Boss would want to hear this, and in turn, he wanted to know what the Boss' recommendation was.

"The target is here and he's already elbow deep in our operation, flashing around a badge. I don't know what level of involvement he has with the International Police, but our asses are hanging in the wind here, big-time." Holiday said, choosing not to mince words as he tucked the phone between his cheek and shoulder and hefted the huge container. "If I'm going to fix this, I need to know how you want it done." He explained, making it clear that he wasn't calling to make excuses. If there was a mistake that had been made, it was on the part of the intel they'd been fed. He wasn't going to own up for someone else's mistake. If that's what he wanted to hear, he'd be wasting his breath by making any further rebuke.

There was silence on the line for a long time, before he got his answer.

"The international police I can take care of." Kazuo confirmed. "Let me handle that part."

"And the kid?" Holiday asked.

"He can't discover who you represent, or what our true intentions are," Kazuo replied curtly.

_That should be easy_, Holiday thought, rolling his eyes, wondering if even he himself knew. "Then I've got to suggest getting rid of some evidence and suspending all our operations here to avoid compromising ourselves, in the meantime. The merchandise could be traced back to us in the hands of the right people and any more time we spend here is a risk to our objective." Holiday explained.

"Then destroy it and leave." Kazuo said with less hesitation than Holiday had initially expected, but he rather liked it. The Boss was to the point and didn't fret over making expenditures for the sake of his goal, which was a sure sign of a good leader.

The Nebula heavy heaved the container over the arm of his passenger-side seat, an plopped it down unceremoniously, to make an audible noise that could be heard over the phone. "I'm way ahead of you, Boss."

He clapped the 'gear shut against his shirt and turned back to his partner.

"So what's the plan?" Doc asked, beating him to the punch and causing him to flatten out his eyebrows unenthusiastically. "If I've learned one thing thus far, it's that you've always got some wild plan."

Holiday only spared him a sidelong glance as he watched the young trainer approach the front of the truck. "When I say go, I want you to book it out of here, and lead him on a big-ass chase through town. Then, in about twenty minutes, I want you to lead him back here and ditch him," he said. "Do what you do best."

Doc, for the first time in their outing to mainland Kanto, found himself sincerely pleased. He rolled his head on his shoulders to loosen his neck up a bit. His Le Parkour du Pokemon was a little rusty but he was certain it would suffice. He let his muscles tense and then relax in phases, as he nodded his approval. "While I'm doing that, what will you be doing?"

Holiday shrugged and lifted the container a bit, sloshing it's contents. "What I do best." He patted his partner on his immense shoulder. "See? Sometimes the best plans _are_ the simplest."

Outside, Ash stopped in his tracks as the driver-side door opened and felt Pikachu likewise tighten at his side. He held up the deputy badge from where it was hanging around his neck and put on his best estimate of an authoritative voice. "Step out of the car!" he yelled. "-er, truck—vehicle, whatever!"

It turned out to be a poor choice of words, regardless, as someone shot from the cabin like a hunter-green bullet throwing a poke ball out ahead of himself at full extension. Though the toss was a lengthy one, whoever it was cleared the burst of light just as the ball itself landed and rebounded neatly back into his hand. Just behind him now, a Pokemon Ash passingly recognized as a Zangoose tucked into a run behind him. Pikachu was off in front of him, heading after them. Ash alone seemed to be the only one hesitant. He fumbled around for a second to replace the badge in his shirt before he started after the perp, squelching away his anxiety.

Behind, Holiday watched them all go with smile. That would make his work tremendously easier. Once he was confident that they were all gone, he unscrewed the lid from the container, and then jerked it down onto its side in the seat where it began glugging out it's contents onto the floor of the cab. He worked himself over into the driver's seat and turned off the engine. Then he turned it back on, shut it back off, and turned it back on several times in rapid succession, as he worked the throttle. It would do two things: flood the engine, and heat up the ignition wire to make it easier to find under the console. After he removed the keys from the ignition he reached down towards the fuse box and jerked the panel away to get at the wiring underneath. A little guesswork and he finally grasped the warmest handful of wires and broke them from their contacts, dropping their frayed copper tips into the pooling chemicals at his feet, hoping that it would contain both the signal and the return wire, thereby completing the circuit and drawing the necessary spark.

He glanced back over at the container and righted it. About half left. It would be much easier to carry now, and he was certain that it would be a more sufficient amount for dealing with their Stool-Pidgey of a middleman. He replaced the plastic cap and hefted the container as he gingerly opened the door and stepped out of the cab. He didn't bother to close it behind himself. When he felt like he was a fair distance away, he pushed the remote starter and tossed the set of keys back over his shoulder into the burst of resultant heat. The incendiary on the floor ignited, taking the entire compartment up with it and racing along the spillage to fill it to all four corners, before billowing out through the back and into the wooden-framed trailer. Within just a few minutes of burning, the flames would penetrate the dash and work its way under the hood, melting and burning anything it could until it ignited the gasoline in the engine. The front of the truck would explode and the reaction would follow the fuel-line all the way back to the gas tanks, which would probably blow the entire truck in half, not to mention create a fireball a hundred feet high. From there, the heat would eventually cause the incendiary itself to go critical and react explosively, taking care of anything incriminating that might be left behind.

The intensity of the fire made his neck sweat as he strode away, but he didn't turn to inspect his handiwork. There was significantly more yet to be done before he could say that the plan had come together.

* * *

Kazuo rested his hands on the table. He wasn't happy about the progression of today's events but this was all essentially a gambit to begin with. Holiday's assignment was paramount, and took precedent. Team Nebula's supplement sales were only a very small fraction of their total income, and since this was a venture market investment, all they had lost was capital anyways. He could live with that. He wasn't happy, but he could live with that.

He could be pleased however, that there had been an opportunity to recoup, if nothing else. Holiday hadn't wasted time with concern for his own standing, before contacting him. Although it did seem somewhat more likely that the Admin simply considered himself above reproach, the effect was much the same. The situation did not have them so backed into a corner as it might have seemed, but it would certainly take some deft oversight to emerge unscathed. He trusted Holiday to put the situation he had at hand to rest, halfway across the world. His part to play, would be somewhat more indirect but just as he'd promised, he would take care of his end of things.

The face of Deputy Commissioner Koya appeared on the floating display before him. It didn't actually exist in a physical sense, being only the parallel end-points of the multi-array beam-splitter positioned in a recess of the drop-down ceiling of his office, essentially just a virtual 'screen' made visibly firing intersecting beams of three-colored light at precise junctures in a flat, imaginary plane that ran the span of the room. The device itself was colloquially a 'hologram projector' a device that utilized new strides in congealed-light photon technology and was capable of rendering complex images (or in this case, traditional two-dimensional video-communications) in high-definition resolutions and clarity without relying on a solid medium such as a screen. It was another piece of Cipher technology that had a hundred different applications, squandered on excess. That, and it drew as much power as a small city. Kazuo was unimpressed, at any rate.

"Ah, Mr. Kazuo," Koya spoke in recognition. "How is business in Orre?"

Koya was always very respectful when they spoke to one another, which was rare. Not his courtesy, he supposed, but the frequency of their conversations. It was not often that he had to speak with anyone from the International Police, after all. Kazuo preferred to follow the golden rule of good business, that being: 'Don't get caught.' Still, a long time ago his organization, or rather Team Plasma before the division had occurred, had gone to great lengths to put Koya into his position of relatively unchecked authority. That said, Koya was a prodigal son of the Commissioner himself, Deputy Commissioner Koya II in actuality, and so this had not taken quite so much effort as it did a careful extension of both camaraderie and cooperation between Koya and the old Team to both aid in the haste of his meteoric rise to the top of the Interpol command chain, and to solicit a sympathetic ear to the Team. Of course, this had meant that Team Plasma had made a desperate bid to insinuate itself into such asylum from legal retribution; cannibalizing itself to achieve said goal by throwing suspected snitches and the unwanted weight of under-bosses to the proverbial legal dogs, as a bargaining chip so to speak. This had probably been, more so than the extremist nature of the remainder of the Team leadership, the chief contributor to Team Plasma's disintegration.

That said, Koya was still something of an asset. Not in Team Nebula's debt per se, and certainly no longer in their sleeve but certainly valuable. And the reason why, was almost as amusing to Kazuo as the story of how it had come to be. There were people who were valuable because they were honest, and people who were valuable because they were loyal. There were people who were valuable because they were skilled, or because they were dedicated. It was strange then to think that the main reason Koya had proven to be a valuable contact and continued to be, even now that the weight of the syndicates was off his shoulders, was that he was simply _lazy_. He could essentially get anything he wanted from the Deputy Commissioner, provided that it was less work than what was already required. Anyone who knew anything about crime from an administrative standpoint knew that it was far simpler to turn a blind eye the truth, than it was to do anything about it.

"Excellent." Kazuo said, like a true cut-throat of his generation. "Our business now accounts for almost eighty-three percent of Orre's projected gross national product after only two fiscal quarters. The new Cipher corporation is on track to become the new face of enterprise both domestic and foreign."

Koya pretended to be interested, keeping an attentive expression though Kazuo could tell he was clicking on his keyboard at interval. "What exactly does the new Cipher corporation produce?"

"We're a highly diversified organization, Commissioner. We deal in everything from agriculture to advanced technology on all levels of the commercial scale, both public and private, in almost every region from here to Kanto." Kazuo explained with minimal gesticulation, since he knew this was for his own benefit. "Which, believe it or not, is precisely why I wanted to speak with you."

He didn't betray the smirk he felt threaten to peek out as Koya flinched, evidently not expecting to be quizzed on what was being said to him and made a concerted effort to zone in his focus. "What can I do for you, Mr. Kazuo?"

"Well, there is a small matter that has just come to my attention." Kazuo threaded his hands together, beginning the opening move that was a feigned to appear as though he were a personal friend making a small breech of etiquette that would collectively save them some hassle. "There was been a slight mix-up, regarding some logistics in a Kantonese city called Viridian. Do you know of it?"

"Sure." Koya said, but began by shaking his head. "But there's a big terrorism scare going on there, right now. Whole local enforcement agency is under heightened alert. Not much I can do."

_Not without filling out papers, at least_, Kazuo suspected. Though the alert was news to him, it fit nicely into his constructed lie. He laid his forearms across the table before taking the second move, in which he would tighten the noose of expectations and pave the way for an easy solution. "No actually, I've been told that there's an _International Agent _involved, specifically. Seems like the local alert has crossed some of the wires in whatever he was hoping to investigate; he's holding up a large shipment of our medicinal goods. Even though the delay is cutting significantly into the profit margin and doing nothing beneficial for the foreign image we're trying to establish, I'd normally handle it myself. But with this alert going on, I'd hate for Cipher to be wrongfully implicated on suspicion."

"I'm sure," Koya agreed, but did not provide illumination as to what course he intended to take, if any.

Kazuo now made his closing move, appealing to Koya's idling nature. Reclining into his high-backed chair he regarded the Commissioner with a friendly smile. "I'm certain that neither of us wants to get mired down with_ that _sort of paperwork. We're both busy men..."

* * *

Ash was heaving by the time they made it back into town and he'd only gained just a few strides. The guy out in front of him was just toying with him, it seemed like. He knew he needed something to even the odds and he needed it fast!

"Volt Tackle!" he called. He couldn't make up the distance but Pikachu could. The electric type crackled along the ground as he blitzed out ahead, launching himself forward with a corkscrewing motion aimed for the back of Doc's legs, but his Zangoose proved too fast. The Nebula Admin spun away just as the Zangoose spun in, taking the blow head on, as it crossed its claws in front of itself. Ash could see that it had just as much endurance as It's trainer. The Volt tackle hardly seemed to bother it.

"Counter!" Doc called over his shoulder. The Zangoose, faster than fast, snatched ahold of Pikachu's head with one tight-gripped claw and raised the other for a massive retaliatory blow. Desperately, Ash leapt forward into the dirt, jerking Pikachu straight backwards by his tail. The blow cleared the electric type's nose by just a few hairs and threw the Zangoose off balance. It was good luck Ash didn't question. He released Pikachu from his guard, and clambered to his feet. Both of them avoided swipes as they blew past Doc's Pokemon, and took up the chase once again, with Zangoose hot on their heels albeit having lost ground on their intended target.

"Special moves from now on!" Ash called to his partner as they dashed across the street into an apartment complex after Doc, feeling that it was a safe assumption to make. Pikachu nodded back at him and turned to put a Thunder attack into Zangoose's face, but their mark was one step ahead.

As Doc sprang cleanly over the hood of a car, tucking both legs to the side, he angled his free hand back and returned the cat ferret Pokemon to it's ball. Pikachu's Thunder hit the pavement to no effect and Doc hit the ground running. Feeling that the feat was one he could replicate, Ash slid across the hood of the car but landed awkwardly on the opposite side while Pikachu tucked low and ran straight underneath it. Ash's sloppy dismount set the car-alarm off and after a few stumbling paces he was sprinting at an increased pace, out of sheer embarrassment.

The chase renewed, Ash followed him into a narrow alley-way behind the apartment building, sliding around a corner and slamming into a brick wall that Doc's precise footwork had helped him avoid. Ash groaned as the perp gained yet more distance on him, thanks to his sloppiness. When looked out ahead though, a smile returned to his face. This guy clearly wasn't from around here. The alley was a dead-end, terminating in a tall barbwire fence. Straightening himself uneasily, he retracted his badge once again and held it on display.

"You're trapped," Ash yelled. "You've got nowhere to go. Give it up!"

The perp didn't stop though. In fact, he just ran harder down the alleyway.

"Stop or we'll-" Ash began, looking apprehensively at his partner. When he looked back however, his voice died out in his throat.

Doc whipped a poke ball toward a nearby fire escape ladder which Ash had discounted on account of it being too high to conceivably get at. A Mankey appeared at it's lower-most rung, clinging tightly from it's feet and extending it's arms down to Doc who caught them in an astounding vertical leap and swung together with his Pokemon like a trapeze artist, propelling himself up and over the barbed hurdle with a kick of his legs. The feat ended with them both on separate sides of the barricade and Doc quickly recalled his Pokemon though the links in the fence, deftly avoiding any counterattack that Ash might have hoped to make.

Forgetting himself entirely, Ash felt his jaw drop. He strode exasperatedly to the fence, gaping at the Nebula Admin on the other side of it who made no real move to escape. Seemingly no longer threatened, he stopped to glance at his Poketch. "What was-" Ash began, his thoughts clouded by awe. "How did you-" he continued, awkwardly. "Do that?"

Doc turned and regarded the young trainer with a small grin. "Le Parkour Du Pokemon is about moving from place to place with the shortest distance traveled with the help of your Pokemon and your own physical ability. Overcoming obstacles. Ignoring barriers," he said with a chuckle. "If you don't get with the program, you're never going to catch me."

Ash scowled. Not one to accept such blatant criticism, he appraised the situation as best he could and decided on the course of action he thought would serve to best silence his opposition. Digging in his pocket he fetched out the RAGE bar he'd been saving for his own consumption and peeled its wrapper away. Once he had done so, he chucked it over the fence.

Doc watched it soar through the air, in a wide arc. High into the twilit sky, and then over his head and back down to the earth, where it collided with the pavement behind him in a sticky mess of chocolate. The Nebula Admin arched a brow. "That was your plan?" Doc snorted. "Throw a chocolate bar?"

Ash let Snorlax's poke ball fall from his hand, with a self-satisfied grin. When the massive Pokemon finally emerged, sniffing lazily for the source of the confectionery aroma, Ash only had to point. "Rollout!"

With uncharacteristic speed, Snorlax came crashing through the fence and sent Doc sailing. Ash stepped through the downed tangle of wire into the fray, just as Doc had finished tumbling head over heels, and Snorlax was licking the last remnants of Ash's intended meal away from his mouth. Though the fact was that he'd essentially just pushed the fence down and that certainly did detract a bit from the accomplishment, he couldn't help but feel that he'd won.

Doc proved not so easily beaten though, and scrambled to his feet before taking off again towards the park in a low sprint. Ash recalled his gluttonous Pokemon with a flick of his wrist, and moved to take off after him, but his partner stopped him short, with a tug on his leg.

"Piiii!" Pikachu whined urgently, pointing back towards where they had came. There was thick smoke rising through the trees, and when he looked more specifically to where he saw Pikachu pointing, he thought he could make out a figure emerging from the treeline.

"Two of them?" He looked back to where Doc was racing out ahead of them, at the distance that got larger and larger every second. He scrambled for an answer but again, his partner was faster.

"Pi pika, kachu!" his Pokemon argued.

"Yea, I know!" Ash shot back tensely, looking down at his diminutive yellow companion. "But I can't let him get away! The whole case depends on this!"

"Pi pii, Pikachu!" The electric rodent retorted.

Ash narrowed his eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Chu!" Pikachu nodded rapidly.

Ash frowned. Looker hadn't showed up, and they were for all intents and purposes, alone. He didn't particularly feel comfortable by himself and he didn't want Pikachu to be stranded either. He didn't like the plan, but it was their only choice. "Alright. You go after that guy, I'll catch this one."

Pikachu took off much like a bolt of lightning, and Ash could only bring himself to yell: "Be careful!" after him, before turning to dash off on his own.

* * *

"What the HEL-" Looker clenched his fist down hard on his own thigh through his pocket, forcing himself to check his language, both for the benefit of the five year old boy whom was tearing into a box of fruit-snacks like there was no tomorrow just ahead of him in the kitchen of Mark Sayso's home, as well as the Internal Affairs Inspector who was on the phone with him, i.e.: his continued employment. "You can't just close my investigation. I'm right in the middle of an arrest!"

"Let me make this clear, detective; you no longer have any authority to make one. Your case is closed. You can either cease operations and return immediately to the local department, for your debrief and return itinerary, or you can be suspended indefinitely without pay," the Inspector said with conviction, before adding a quiet addendum to the threat. "And just so you're _absolutely_ clear, this is coming down quite a ways. I'd suggest you not row against the current anymore, detective."

The line went dead before he could respond, even if he'd had something to say. He didn't of course. At least nothing that he dared let fly out of his mouth just yet. There were children present, after all. He let out a long ragged noise and prepared the most even expression he could mutter. "Is everything alright? Got what you need, until your dad gets home?"

The boy made a remark around a gob of fruit-flavored gelatin and nodded. That was good enough, he supposed. He'd made a tip to the arson unit concerning this address on his way over. It wasn't exactly inter-bureau cooperation, but it did mean that Mark's house was now under tight enough surveillance that he felt comfortable leaving it, if not necessarily comfortable about leaving a five year old unattended in it.

When he shut the door behind himself, he launched into a torrent of the most vile names and swears he could muster which after fifteen years on the force, was a sufficient amount to make any normal man's stomach turn and cause fainting spells in the fairer sex. He had no idea what to do, or what he was going to tell his deputy, who was now probably either chasing, or worse getting the shit kicked out of him by, perps that essentially had diplomatic immunity, even after sticking his neck out to uphold a valiant ideal, all while he sat on the phone getting lectured pointlessly for a half-hour. An ideal that just didn't seem to fucking exist anymore.

An ideal called justice.

* * *

Holiday kicked open the door, enjoying the look of absolute shock he got as he stood there in it's open jamb, the door wobbling precariously on it's hinges after colliding with the glass window behind it handle first, cracking it. Holiday pointed at their middle-man and tilted his head to the side. He swept a white glove through his hair and then lowered the rim of his glasses, to leer out over them.

"Told you so," he said with a grin.

"Get out of my store, you scumbag!" Mark shouted at once, banging his fist on the counter-top in anger and surprise. He'd struggled to maintain a solid disposition since his nephew had arrived, hoping against hope that the lack of appearances from the detective and his deputy meant that the matter had been resolved. He'd calmly explained to his nephew what was happening and continued working as normal but the appearance of the Nebula admin meant that he'd truly been used and betrayed by everyone, and he just couldn't handle it anymore.

Holiday felt his features tighten up, as he made a face much like a spoiled child who'd received an inadequate birthday gift. He set the container down on the ground, and scratched the back of his head in disappointment. "I think you got your lines mixed up there." Holiday assured him, setting a foot casually on top of the heavy container. "I think you meant to say something like 'Please don't burn my store to the ground' or 'At least spare my life,' am I right?"

"Go to hell!" Mark screamed, sliding the cuff sideways along the edge of the cash-box's handle, pulling it out from under the broken weld on the left hand side he'd always meant to stick back down with JB welders, but never got around to since it didn't look broken unless you pulled on it. He'd been afraid to detach himself earlier for fear that his captors would return and hold him in contempt of their custody, but now he found himself climbing over the counter-top after the Nebula heavy in blind rage.

Holiday didn't offer any trite comeback this time, just booted over the container, spilling it's flammable mixture onto the linoleum. As Mark's penny-loafers hit the tile on the opposite side, the unintentional oil-slick did it's work, pulling his feet out from underneath him and busting the back of his head off the register before depositing him ultimately in a soaking, unconscious heap on the floor. The Nebula Admin practically burst into tears.

"I can't believe that just fucking happened!" he shrieked, slapping his own shin as he buckled with laughter. A slight shuffle to his left and the sound of a can of repel hitting the floor broke him from his reverie, but he could not help but let out a few more chuckles.

He glanced over at the younger Sayso relation, who'd apparently just so happened to be unfortunate enough to be scheduled in that particular day. Holiday stood back up to his full, towering height and angled his head, so that he had a clearer view around a display stand. The mop-headed youth stuttered for a moment before he was able to mange his question. "Are you really one of those yakuza guys?"

Holiday looked down at himself for a long moment, then back up. "Yup." He nodded, lifting the container that now only had just a small amount of the incendiary compound left inside it, and took a step toward where Jason was perched on the stepladder, stocking the top shelf of the first aisle.

"Are you really going to burn this place down?" Jason shifted his feet awkwardly on the top rung.

Holiday glanced at the noxious propellant pooling across the floor as they spoke, now coming to a stop at the side of the ladder. "Yup," he assured.

"With me in it?" Jason brushed his flyaway bangs from his wide eyes.

Holiday looked around, as though he hadn't yet given the thought much consideration, or else was looking for people who might catch him in the act. "Yup."

"...Man, that is so awesome." Jason finally said in awe.

Holiday gave the ladder a sharp jerk, then, sending it and Jason careening into the opposite aisle which caved in and toppled over him with a rolling crash of falling merchandise. "...You're creepy kid.

Holiday whistled approvingly at his own handwork. It needed a good finisher, he decided. A one-liner to wrap it all up. 'Caution: Floors are slippery when wet,' or 'Cleanup on Aisle Two,' but he couldn't think of one that properly summed it all up. He frowned disapprovingly. Surely he could come up with something! He snapped his fingers, trying to prompt himself, but nothing made itself apparent after several long seconds, which was just enough time for his pursuer to catch up with him. Pikachu rounded the corner into the Poke Mart and loosed a thunder attack that lit the air next to Holiday's face and slammed into the far wall, miraculously devoid of any grounded arc. Holiday yelped in panic, and turned to face his attacker.

"Hey, _whoa_!" The admin cried, extending his hand to settle the electric type. "Stop!"

"Piiii!" Pikachu threatened, taking stock in his surroundings. He didn't see anyone else around; just a big mess. Mark had groggily come to his feet, clawing his way back around the counter for the sake of his own defense, too disoriented to do much else. Jason was buried under a pile of bagged poke-chow. Pikachu didn't necessarily understand the nature of the acrid smell in the air but he knew something terrible was happening.

"One more like that," Holiday bargained, "And this whole place is gonna go up in flames." That was partially truthful, actually. Holiday knew that it was far more likely that the electrical current would send the incendiary into it's reactive state, completely bypassing it's normal threshold, and trigger a detonation. Without containment the blast itself would be miniscule, but it would almost certainly be lethal to him, without any form of cover or protection. The fact that it would probably kill the Pikachu as well didn't comfort him any.

Pikachu lightened his aggressive stance. He understood that for the most part but was quite confident in his ability to precisely place his attacks if the need did present itself, and more so in the fact that he seemed to have his quarry pinned for the most part. What he'd failed to notice was the large container in Holidays primary hand which he now whipped overhand at the rodent. The container itself having simply more mass than he did, sent Pikachu flying out of the Poke Mart the way he'd came. Which was good, because the knee-jerk reaction Thundershock collided with it's non-conductive surface, and sent a web of sparks and current into the floor.

* * *

Detective Penny considered herself a pretty simple woman. Or at least, she must have seemed that way to other people. She wasn't notoriously easy to get along with, but she did have a valiant streak that everyone seemed to know about. She'd spoke with Looker after it seemed her role to play in the Team Rocket case had come to a screeching halt, just as soon as it had began. It was all well and good to have a loose cannon on the team when you wanted answers but when it came to litigation, she was as about as useful as an inflatable dartboard.

More than anything, she wanted to do _good_. She wanted to do what was right in a relativistic sense, even if it meant walking a thin line to do it. But that was never good enough for some people. Not in this town, at least. Not anywhere there had been corruption on the scale that there had been in the past, could there be the slightest room for action without legal pretense in public. Behind closed doors, it all seemed to be well and good though, and that was what frustrated her. The bureau liked to pretend it was this pure, magnanimous thing that always had the legal and moral high-ground when really, it was just the reverse side of the same tarnished coin, on which the face of crime rested.

That was probably why she'd remained on the line after Looker had opened the conversation with a darkened comparison of their lives as detectives, complete with vicious words of choice for the system of law, from administrative to regulative. Why she'd listened to his complaints, his aggravation with a sympathetic ear rather than hang up on someone who could obviously no longer legally requisition her help and get on with the shitty day she was having.

Because she was a simple woman. And because like her, agent Looker was a simple man. Intrinsically they both wished to do right, as it was laid out in front of them, and undoubtedly both of them were being restrained from that by their respective organizations. She supposed, that to one extent or another, anyone who'd ever wanted to put on a badge had to feel similar in one way or another. It was just that unlike her, unlike him, most eventually knuckled under or became part of the problem, to move higher in the bureau.

But there had to be someone to ask the tough questions. Someone to do the right thing, even if they had to do it while no one was looking. That, more than anything, was why she was here. Granted, she hadn't hardly expected the place to explode the second she arrived but, she fancied herself 'hard-boiled, film-noir detective' type at heart, (_sans gender_, some might have remarked) so she kept her wits as a matter of personal integrity.

A yellow ball of fur came sailing towards her, from the inferno and landed in her hands like a well-placed forward pass. It seemed okay. Out cold, and singed in some places, but it was already starting to stir, which she took as a good sign.

Looker had explained what was happening and asked her to come here with the expectation that things could get messy and that there was a definite possibility of a conflict. She set the Pikachu down gently into the open saddle-bag of her patrol cycle as she dismounted before reaching into her leather jacket for her poke balls. She'd gotten her start in the bureau as a beat officer on the near east side; she did not shy from the possibility of conflict. Her faithful Arcanine had seen service with the Viridian Fire Department, as well. They were more than prepared for this.

"Arcanine!" She shouted, throwing the K9 engraved, blue and white police-issued great ball out in front of herself. The mighty dog Pokemon cast long shadows in the glow of the building fire, but did not appear apprehensive. "Let's uphold the law."

* * *

Holiday saw the stock-room door many feet in front of himself; a rectangle in the blackness that spouted nothing but heat and fire. Groggily, he sat up and laid hands on himself. There was a dull pain in his lower back, but he figured it must've been from where he'd collided with either the door or the concrete. Other than that, he didn't feel like he was injured or bleeding anywhere. He didn't bother to fret over it, either. He could give it all the planning in the world, but sometimes you just had to get lucky. He scrambled to his feet. Just as he was preparing to leave, it came to him. With a sneer, he regarded the flaming portal into the store proper.

"Looks like they're having a _blowout sale_." He pretended to clutch an award and thank an invisible audience. His job here was now _obviously_ done.

He mashed the open button on the dock door repeatedly and thankfully, it was still working. It quit about a foot and a half off the floor but it was enough for him to creep under. When he emerged into the open air he realized that he'd been breathing smoke for quite some time and violently erupted into a coughing fit as he booked down the rear alley and into the street, which was by now mostly empty.

Well, except for two people, only one of whom he was glad to see.

Doc came ripping past him and he struggled to keep pace behind, annoyed to see that his partner was maintaining a pace he could scarcely match. Granted, his lungs were protesting on grounds of abuse but still, they'd split up almost a half hour ago. He was slightly more annoyed to see that he'd not yet ditched his pursuer.

"I thought you were gonna lose the kid, Doc!" He snarled as he literally threw his upper body forward and let his legs work desperately to catch it, a necessity to match Doc's effortless speed.

"Me too," Doc offered, before letting out a puff of air, and inhaling another deep breath through his nose. "Kid's good."

"Fuck!" Holiday yelped, as Doc Vaulted over a mailbox he hadn't seen coming, while he himself was forced to turn an awkwardly tight pirouette, and continued forward. As he looked behind, he saw Ash, only just a few seconds distance on their heels call his Muk out in front of himself. The sludge Pokemon slopped itself across the mailbox, gelatinous altering it's shape to become a living ramp. Which Holiday thought was pretty stupid, considering he'd just get his shoes stuck in it and sink. That was until Ash called for his Muk to use Harden, and ran up his crusted-over Pokemon and landed several leg-lengths closer than he'd been before, returning his Pokemon without so much as a glance. At that point it was just unfortunate. And also, kind of gross. Holiday kept sprinting, keeping pace with his partner as they led their pursuer to the near outskirts of the city. "Alright, you had your chance," he remarked finally. "My turn."

"What do you," Doc began, letting go of another gust of air, "suggest?"

"Dip out, man." Holiday paused to huff himself. "I'll take care of it from here."

"Fuck!" Doc gasped, mimicking his partner's comment only seconds earlier as a car pulled out in front of them. Unlike Holiday who skidded to a stop against the driver-side door, Doc released his newest Pokemon, and leapt to seize hold of the flying type's legs as it carried itself into the air with only a few powerful beats of it's impressive wingspan. The Pidgeot carried him over the intersection, and quickly into the sky. "I'll catch you later, Bro," he yelled back to his grounded accomplice.

"That's..." Ash felt something inside his chest twist harshly, and he didn't like it. "My Pidgeot."

Holiday turned expecting their pursuer to be directly behind them, but instead, he was standing on the street corner, eyes skyward. Holiday felt the car pull away behind him, leaving them alone at the t-intersection. His eyebrows rose with that tidbit of information but he didn't offer comment. "You're gonna get yourself hurt, kid." Holiday betrayed a smile. "Hurt bad."

"That's_ my_ Pidgeot." Ash repeated blankly.

"I don't think you understand-"

"I don't think_ you_ understand," Ash snarled, his voice suddenly losing the tone of hurt and adopting one of anger. "Do you have any idea what I do to people who steal Pokemon?" He withdrew a poke ball from his belt. "On a regular _basis_?"

Holiday frowned. He wasn't sure he cared for the youthful imagination. "Stolen?" He let go of a malicious chortle. "I watched my buddy _catch_ that Pokemon." Ash cranked his features into an expression of annoyed disbelief, but Holiday shrugged and rolled his eyes. "You were saying?"

Ash considered the possibility, the almost heartbreaking unlikelihood that someone, particular these someones, had just come along and captured one of his friends. Granted, they did technically have as much right as anyone, since he'd released Pidgeot from his control over three years ago, and the fact that it made the entire issue his fault, did not ease his suffering. He struggled to keep tears from leaking out of his eyes, blinking away the moisture that was rapidly accruing therein. He could only bring himself to make an angry sound, as he threw Bulbasaur's poke ball, ready to engage in battle right there in the street, too emotional to notice the column of dark smoke rising into the nights sky behind him.

* * *

She had been like an angel. A beautiful, hard-edged, leather-wearing angel. Mark had watched her crash through the window with a leading elbow, bypassing the ring of flames that kept him trapped behind the counter, all the smoked-over glass falling away either by force or by glory, revealing the light of salvation that he'd scarcely hoped he deserved.

He'd tried to choke out his nephew's name, to gesture deeper into the burning store, but it was no good. Instead, his had guardian tore off her jacket and put it over him, smothering out the flames that had licked up his propellant soaked apron without him realizing it, while he coughed and wheezed in the noxious smoke.

He'd let her pull him weakly from the building back the way she'd came and nearly fainted with relief when her Arcanine had pulled Jason from the fire by his collar, bruised but still very much alive.

Now he was sitting in on the curb, sucking air and shaking violently. His mind was a blank, at present. He was just thankful to be alive. He busied himself by watching the woman who'd saved him dash into and then back out of the burning building along with her Pokemon, over and over at interval. He wanted to ask why, but he didn't have the energy. It wasn't until the third repetition of this task, that she emerged for good, shaking her head violently. She'd accidentally caught the tips of her long hair on fire, and whipped and batted at it gracelessly to put it out. What was so disconcerting about it, was that she didn't seem to care. She'd lost two inches of amazing looking blue hair, and didn't seem upset. What woman wouldn't get upset over that?

"I'm going home." Jason said with a warbled sob, drawing his attention. "Is there gonna be work tomorrow, uncle Mark?"

He would have found the running eye-liner funny any other time, but just shook his head soberly. "I don't think so." He would have probably stopped to consider how long it had been since Jason had willingly called him _uncle_ Mark, if he were in better shape but instead he watched his nephew depart quietly. When the woman who'd saved their lives stepped up beside him, and jerked at his shirt, he got weakly to his feet.

"We have to go," she insisted, practically dragging him at the end of a clenched fist. "Police are going to be here soon."

He felt his eyes widen. Her patrol bike said Viridian City Police Department. Didn't that make her police? To exhausted, scared, and confused to ask, he succumbed to her herding, and eventually worked himself awkwardly onto the bucketed end of the motorcycle's elongated seat. Without further explanation, they were away. He clutched the edges of the seat, and tried his best to lean the way she leaned, in an effort to stay seated, and avoid having to hold onto her. Her scent carried on the wind behind her, and rushed through his sinuses. She smelled like cigarettes, heat-sweat and burnt hair. He tried not to find it overly offensive on principle.

He wanted to pretend he hadn't passed out, but he woke up on her shoulder minutes later, the imprint of her lapel leaving an uncomfortable mark on his face. She nodded off of the bike when he came to and he was thankful that she was silent. They were at his home. There was a light on. He could see his boy peeking through the blinds in the front room to see what was making so much noise out front. He felt his next breath catch in his throat and he was coughing again, making for his front door when he felt that black-leather man-hand wrap around his elbow, slowing him up.

"Hey," she said, trying to catch his attention. When he turned to look, she had a brown paper bag in her hand and was stuffing it into his. "Everything is all taken care of, okay?"

He started a sentence but then stopped himself. He didn't know what to say to that. How could everything be taken care of? He was still going to jail. He'd still lost his family business in the fire. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and the people in his life and he intended to be thankful for those things up until the moment they came to arrest him. But he was still going to pay yet. How could she possibly understand?

"All of the evidence is going to burn in that fire," she said, without any hint of ego or condescension. "You're holding everything that was in the cash box. Try to keep it in line from now on."

He looked down at the bag, peeking through it's crinkled opening. Every bill that he'd made from his sale of the illegal supplements was there staring him in the face, plus all the profits from his normal sales since the last bank deposit he'd made. He didn't know how much it was exactly, but it amounted to a small fortune. He felt his lower lip quake.

"I can't take this," he began, but she cut him short.

"You can either take it, or you can go to jail for trying to bribe a cop." She crossed her arms, making it quite clear to him that she refused to take it back.

He blinked in total shock. "I don't know what to say."

"Nothing," she responded immediately. "To anybody."

He watched her step back over the saddle of her motorcycle, and engage the throaty two stroke engine. He was surprised by how loud it sounded when you weren't on top of it. He shook his head slightly, so bewildered by what had happened, and with all of the thoughts now that were creeping back into his head. Uninhibited by his normal tact in light of his suffering, he just spit it out. "You're _amazing_."

Penny laughed. Not a giggle. Not a titter. She laughed, deep and hard, slapping the seat in front of her. She had a nice smile, he noticed.

"What's your name?" he asked, testingly, almost unsure how to gauge her laughter as a response.

She dialed her laugh back to a healthy smirk, and shrugged sympathetically, almost as if she were about to offer him a pittance. "Penny."

Mark raised his eyebrows. He'd expected something that sounded more manly, than that, but he kept it to himself. It was a nice enough name, at any rate. "I'm Mark," he offered for the sake of fairness.

"Mark, huh?" she remarked, leaning slightly to the right, and pushing back the kickstand. "I never woulda guessed." She reached out and flicked his mostly-legible name-tag with a gloved fingertip.

He suddenly felt the perceived level of charm he imagined himself exuding taking a sharp dive. He thought for a moment that he was about to work up the gumption to ask her out, but he decided that he didn't need to add insult to injury. He'd already had a crazy enough week. He didn't need to add rejection to the list.

_But then again_, he thought, _it wasn't like this night could get any worse_.

"Hey, do you think maybe we could get some coffee together or something, sometime?" He asked, turning just in time to see Penny crank the throttle, with another raspy, unladylike guffaw, before peeling away. _Hey,_ he considered with amusement, _That wasn't necessarily an no. _

He turned, feeling too tired to smile, and walked up his driveway, into his home, but the sudden outburst of affection from his son, as he stepped inside, returned to him the energy required.

Penny, now roaring down the street, reached down into the saddle-bag, and inspected the dazed Pokemon, hoping to find that it had awakened. What she got was an intense shock, That caused her to rook the front wheel slightly. Pikachu was out of the bag, up her arm and into the seat like a flash, clinging to any surface his tiny fingers could get ahold of, looking around desperately for his partner with each split-second halt, and dispensing shocks at every interval between.

Penny could empathize with the disoriented, panic-stricken Pokemon, but they were on a moving vehicle. "Knock it off!" She yelled, trying desperately to keep the bike in a straight line as she was zapped again. "I'm trying to find your trainer!"

* * *

"That didn't take long." Ash said, feeling considerable better.

He and Bulbasaur alone had made laughably short work of every Pokemon Holiday had brought to bear. Which wasn't nearly as impressive as it sounded, since he'd sent out a Rattata, a Zubat, a Sunkern, a Metapod and a Magikarp, which Ash almost hadn't believed when he'd seen it. His battling skills hadn't amounted to much either, and it seemed his training ability, if he actually had any was about on the same level, since he'd have believed it if he'd been told that each of Holiday's Pokemon were just recently caught. He was almost angry that this was the first win of his journey. He complimented Bulbasaur most specifically on the speed of the victories, before returning him to his poke ball, rather than overstating the victory itself. Bulbasaur was smart enough to know better, just the same as he did.

"You suck at battling," he clarified, just so that Holiday would be perfectly aware. If it had been someone else, he supposed he would have just gently complimented himself, and moved on, but it didn't make much sense to be nice, here. Holiday even seemed a little put off by that which thankfully added to the miniscule feeling of satisfaction he'd garnered from the battle.

"And now you're under arrest," he finished, whipping out another set of handcuffs from his jacket. He wondered how Looker had expected him to apprehend two suspects with one remaining pair for just a moment, but quickly put his mind back to better use. He locked eyes with his mark as he made his approach, looking for some indication that he would run, but he saw none. Instead, he was surprised when Holiday's expression bugged out wildly, and he threw a hand into the air, finger extended into the air over his shoulder

"_Is that a U.F.O?_" he howled maniacally.

Ash found that he had ducked a little bit, expecting the outburst to be a drawn weapon or something similar, but he didn't dare turn around. Instead he frowned. He knew he wasn't exactly the smartest guy around, but how dumb did people really think he looked? "Seriously, that's the best you could do? The ol' _'what's that behind you?'_ gag?" He extended the cuffs for his suspects hands and was surprised when he only shrugged.

"Suit yourself."

Ash never saw it coming and collapsed face down into the street, the world vanishing before his eyes like the flipping of a light-switch with the passing of his major cognitive functions when the powerful Confuse Ray attack collided with the back of his head. Holiday let go of a laugh he'd been holding in and regarded his Shedinja was a satisfied sneer. "Who'd have ever expected me to have six Pokemon?" He snorted, nudging Ash a bit with his foot. "Not you, apparently."

Holiday reached down and worked to flip the young trainer over before rummaging through his jacket. He pocketed the badge and the cuffs and held Ash's expensive looking 'gear up in contemplation for a few long moments. Deciding he didn't have long before he needed to be gone, he set to work quickly. He reached into his own jacket, and produced his Pokegear, popping off the back covers of both and swapping the SIM cards.

That would prove useful he imagined. His was stamped with a unique serial number and traceable via satellite in real time, he'd found out not too long ago, by 'overhearing'. He figured the Boss would enjoy having a little tighter reins on the kid and he didn't exactly appreciate the fact that 'big brother' was always watching _him_ anyways. This way everyone would be happy, he thought sarcastically, replacing the covers and pokegears with haste.

That said, he wasn't sure how the Boss would feel about him leaving the kid passed out in the middle of the road, but it wouldn't do to get busted now. He had a rendezvous to keep anyway.

* * *

Looker had been nervous to find that the unit in charge of his debriefing was being scrambled to deal with a suspected arson. Outright alarmed when he'd found out the address. Utterly terrified when he'd been told he would be coming along for the ride. When the fire department had dispersed and the forensics unit moved in, he'd pretty much considered the possibility of tendering his resignation by this time next week as opposed to being stuck in his office. That was if he didn't get arrested outright. So it was to his ultimate relief when he was informed that signs almost instantly pointed to a smash and grab robbery.

And it seemed that was how it was going to stay as he joined the unit within the desiccated brick husk of the poke mart. There was nothing incriminating that he could find, and all the evidence did seem to point towards a robbery and arson. It was a convenient lapse in judgment he wasn't going to correct. Or at least, he hoped he wouldn't have to.

"One thing strikes me as odd, though:" He spun quickly, thinking he was about to hear his death-sentence and fixed the officer who'd said it with a quizzical glare. Quickly, he was at her side, inspecting what she was looking at. They appeared to be simple scorch-marks on the floor. Rather than risk saying something stupid he merely perked his eyebrows to show that he was interested.

"The arsonist used a rather peculiar type of incendiary." The specialist pointed to some chemical returns in the lower spectrum of the readout on a bomb-sniffing device she was using. "It's not commonly found in this sort of quantity here," she said with a concerned frown, which Looker matched with his own even though he wanted let out a sigh of relief.

"What do you think that suggests, detective?" Looker asked, trying to appear as though he was taking the investigator at her word.

"There are no refineries capable of producing this stuff in the required volumes here on the mainland. All the ingredients are strictly controlled schedule one material, so private distillation is unlikely as well." The investigator clarified.

"So it's imported." Looker asked.

"I'd say absolutely." The investigator held up a secondary report. "Furthermore, this is the same substance that was found in the explosives package on Route 1."

Ah. The much mentioned explosives. He wouldn't have minded having a look at that himself, before he left, even if it was just out of curiosity at this point. "Would it be permissible to corroborate that, officer, uh..." He glanced down at her badge and then felt quite silly. "Jenny?"

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid the bureau won't allow that for safety reasons." Jenny explained.

He was slightly taken aback. "I've had explosive ordinance disposal training, ma'am."

The investigator rubbed her neck wearily. "I understand sir. It's just that, thus far the bomb has yet to be fully deactivated. Whenever the EOD engineers tries to shut it down, or take it apart, it returns to it's armed state. The whole thing is just a tangle of redundant systems and sub-routines, and there are anti-tamper mechanisms on a whole other level than what we've had to deal with before. It's turning into a real nightmare, sir. So for the chief concern of the safety of all involved, the bureau will most likely deny that request." she explained apologetically.

Looker felt his eyes widen. That certainly was something. "It sounds like this device is pretty intricate. Do you have much experience yourself, in ordinance disposal?" He asked, now out of curiosity that was entirely genuine.

"It was my original detail, sir." Jenny said with a smile. "My background is in chromatographic forensics, like you see here." She pointed at the spectrometer reading between them.

"So, then, would you say this work seems to be characteristic of Team Rocket?" He said cautiously, eying the investigator for her reaction. It seemed likely that she would be ordered to tell him that she had no comment on the matter, being that he was not in her chain of command, and that any information she was giving him was on a need to know basis. He was surprised however when she did a small double-take, and spoke in a hushed tone.

"My unofficial opinion, sir?" she began inquiringly. Looker nodded.

"None of this stuff seems like Team Rocket's MO, and the logistics of it are well beyond them, as far as what they'd be capable of here in Viridian. Word is, that because of their suspected leader's original involvement with the City, we maintain a lot of the old information safety-nets to keep Rocket influence out of this town. Before this event, we got nothing, not even so much as a whiff of trouble, sir." She said quietly.

"Any idea as to why that might be?" Looker crossed his arms. He could see where this was going, but he didn't want to put words in her mouth. It would be best to let her speak her mind.

"I'm not sure what it could be, other than some other entity. On precisely whom, I can't speculate. I don't know much about the other syndicates, Inspector, all we've ever had to deal with here is Team Rocket." she admitted, changing his opinion of her a bit. Most local cops wouldn't admit to being just a small cog in a big clock, and he thought it was pretty sensible.

"Have you spoken with your superiors about this?" He asked after a moment of thought, wondering if he might've been wrong regarding their stance on this whole case.

"No sir!" She said at once, loudly, but then cautiously returned to a hushed voice. "The notion has been snubbed." She stepped in slightly, to reveal the centerpiece of her presented argument. "Top Brass is gunning for these guys, sir. Honestly, do you think the bureau would miss an opportunity to put the public to rest, and bag the biggest offenders in the country for good, all in one swoop? Regardless of whether or not the evidence is in fact legitimate, unless they can refute it, the DA will try to drag their whole organization under."

He shook his head intensely. The law bends from both sides, he supposed. "Your opinion?

Jenny shook her head. "As long as they keep the investigation open... It's really none of my-"

Looker's phone went off, and he had to place a his hand up placatingly, as he dug in his pocket. It was Detective Penny. He was now very curious for more information regarding the methods he suspected these newcomers had chosen to employ, and he was eventually hoping to work his way back to it. For now, though the matter at hand was more important. "Sorry," he excused himself. "I have to take this."

Stepping out of the building, or what remained of it, Looker answered the phone and put it to his ear. Careful not to mention anything specific, he spoke as generally as he could. "You did a great job with that favor I asked. Any more good news about our mutual friends?"

Jenny on the other end, spoke somewhat more freely. "I found your deputy." She paused for a moment, as if she were thinking what best to say. "Listen, I don't think you're gonna like this...Maybe I should just let you talk to him."

She held the phone out to the trainer who looked to be doing considerably better than he was when she'd come across him, petting the Pikachu in his lap tiredly. "Who is it?" he asked.

"Agent Looker," she explained.

Ash took the phone wordlessly, and put it to his ear. "'lo?" he managed weakly.

"Ash! I'm glad you're okay. Look, I'm sorry about all this, it's just-"

"All what?" Ash asked with a yawn.

"Well, I mean, just the, well- nevermind. Ash, did you catch our guys? Did you get positive ID's, anything?"

Ash blinked. "Guys? What are you talking about?"

There was a stunned silence on the line. "...Ash, are you alright?"

Lifting his hand from where he'd had it scratching behind Pikachu's ear, he began to scratch his own head in confusion.

"_Who_ is this, again?"

* * *

A/N: Edited! (sorta) Thanks for reading.


	6. Chapter VI

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Team Nebula gets away clean and Ash continues clueless on his course. On their collective way to Pewter they must all cross paths, however briefly, with the youngest Waterflower. For some this means certain death, but for others?

A/N: Been waiting to write this chapter for a while now! Hope you have as much fun reading it, as I did writing it. Either way, prepare for a whole chapter of awkward!

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter VI**

"Cry Havoc"

For Misty, passing through Mt. Moon was a small thing. The terrain was rocky of course and there were almost always trainers out waiting to pounce on any passer-by they thought they could get a battle out of- not that she really blamed them, trainers were just like that. But she was not scared of the dark, nor did the prospect of coming across a few Zubat give her much cause for concern. The possibility of waking up a sleeping Rock-type was likewise untroubling.

The rest of her trip following the underground segment had similarly been free of any real hang-ups as well, her trip through Pewter City being mostly uneventful. Now however, her pedaling was slow and nervous, each subsequent push a slow rise and fall as she put all of her body-weight onto the pedals and stood vertically to survey her surroundings uninterrupted for as long as she could. Her eyes darted rapidly at each small noise or movement in Viridian Forrest. Each one spelling out terror in its uncertain connotations. She knew from experience that this place was absolutely crawling with bug-types. _Crawling._

She suppressed a shudder. There were very few things she was scared of- and truthfully, it wasn't really that she was scared of Bug Pokemon, either. At least not as an idea. She thought a few were alright. Ash's Butterfree, that was one at least, that she had really sort of liked! She supposed she could even handle looking at one of the really creepy ones like an Ariados or a Yanmega, provided of course that it was a good distance away and she didn't have to look for too long.

It was the slim possibility that she might end up _wearing_ one, that horrified her the most. The prospect of touching or even being touched by a bug made her skin crawl. Captured bug Pokemon were tolerable if only because they didn't seem to think it was okay to crawl all over you like wild Pokemon did, for the most part. This, she imagined, was probably why she'd never had a huge issue with Tracy's Scyther or Ash's Herracross or all the other Bug Pokemon her friends had owned over the years, for that matter. However, the idea that at any moment, some creepy Kakuna could slide down it's little silk line and drop right down her collar made her reflexively shrug her shoulders up high and tilt her head back.

She needed to think about something else, she decided.

It was a nice spring day outside. A perfect day really, for biking. She'd decided to take the bike-trail instead of the regular hiking path most trainers took through the forest. It cut through most of the features of the Viridian landscape. Hillside passes and steep inclines that the foot-trails weaved to avoid. It was faster as the Swellow flies, but the trip was much more arduous. Unless, of course, you had a twenty-seven speed bike, like she did. Being able to get out and flex on a trip like this had been doing wonders for stress-relief up and until this point.

Unfortunately, even if it were not for the bugs, there was still the matter of what she was going to say to Ash when she got to Pallet and that certainly had it's own level of stress that came with it. It wasn't necessarily that she was unsure what she would say, (since she'd been going over it in her head since she'd left her house) so much as she was nervous about meeting up with her old friend after all this time. It had been several years now since she'd seen him last, and while she did hear from him every so often over the videophone she honestly had very little to do with his daily comings and goings anymore. She imagined that showing up out of the blue just to verbally rip him to shreds and take him down off his pedestal was going to be pretty awkward for everyone involved. Especially if his Mom was there. How would she respond to something like that, Misty thought with twinge of apprehension. She wouldn't worry about it, she decided. She'd just do her best to get him alone. Regardless of whether or not his mom was going to baby him, this obviously had to be done. She knew why Brock had called her.

Ash, for the most part was an okay guy. All and all he was a nice enough person, if you liked spoiled little brats with no manners. He treated his Pokemon so well that you almost couldn't tell, anyways. Every so often though, he would just go off on these head-trips, where he thought he knew what was best and he wouldn't listen to anyone else's opinion on the matter, no matter how painfully deluded he was. While it was infuriating in and of itself how many times he succeeded with stupidity or stubbornness alone in spite of being dead wrong, these sorts of tangents usually entailed him virtually ignoring everything but his intended goal until he achieved it, regardless of what that caused. A long time ago, she'd given up on trying to reign Ash in, but this time it was his friends he was ignoring and she wasn't going to stand for it. She hadn't rained on his parade for a long time now, but she was sure she was still the best at it, for the simple fact that she'd gotten in a lot of practice. Way back when, it had been an almost daily thing. Honestly, though, why no one else had ever learned to wreak havoc on Ash's delusions of grandeur, was beyond her.

A deeper, more secretive part of her was even more stressed by their upcoming meeting. For that part of her, this was a reunion of sorts. She was probably never going to admit it aloud, and she had certainly never gone so far as to tell anyone, but a long time ago, she'd had a little bit of a crush on Ash. It was an assumed thing, that after the many years they'd spent apart that her feelings for him had long since been brushed aside, or just died out in stagnation, but apparently, (at least according to the nagging feeling in her diaphragm) they hadn't. She certainly didn't need that old hat coming back to haunt her right now.

But still, what would Ash say when he saw her? How would he react? If he was happy to see her, could she really start what was undoubtedly going to turn into a fight with him? If she did, what would she do if it ended with them on bad terms? What would she do if he outright refused to talk to her to begin with? She didn't know the answers to any of those questions. A lot had changed since those days when they regularly stormed away from each-other in the morning and were friends again by sundown. This time there would be no afternoon in which to stew and then grudgingly apologize. It would probably be another three years before she saw him again! How much had they both changed since then?

Though ostensibly, nothing really had about Ash. Maybe that was why she was so nervous. If you had looked at all the video conversations she'd had with him since they'd parted ways in a high-speed time lapse she was sure it would look like the same laughing, smiling kid changing his outfit three times while the world and all the people in it frenzied around behind him like ants. She however, had undergone some rather serious changes, not the least of which was puberty which had obviously passed Ash over for later seasons. Not that she was thrilled about it. It had left her very tall and though she felt it was awkwardly so, her sisters had attributed her height to one thing. Superior Waterflower genetics. Yes, the changes had made her as tall as any of her statuesque sisters, but cruelly chosen to deny her the other familial advantage her sisters had claim to: the ability to fill a swimsuit to the brim. When asked to explain that shortcoming, her sisters had likewise attributed it to one thing. This time? Bad luck.

Essentially, she saw herself as a giant with a good swimmers physique but no real tan of which to speak. Having fair skin, she supposed, would've been okay too, if it weren't for all the freckles. She had as much self confidence as anyone anywhere, but there was nothing quite like three gorgeous supermodel sisters to throw all your shortcomings into sharp relief. Their blinding success in the professional world didn't didn't leave much room for a leg up, either.

Then there had been the whole braces thing a few years ago, which she could safely say was among the more terrible experiences of her life. Although, painful as they were, she was even more thankful that she had managed to keep that little secret to herself, as she was sure Ash would have teased her relentlessly for it if he had found out, and she honestly got about all she could stand from the middle sisters. Tracy had immediately been bound to secrecy on the issue, with several threats, and for almost two years she dutifully restrained herself from grinning in any capacity when she spoke with him over the phone and for most of that time had assumed, much to her combined chagrin and relief that Ash either did not care, or did not notice. Still though, Ash had said something one day that surprised her. Both because it was Ash who said it, and because it was actually a little bit affectionate, which was something she knew good and well Ash was not.

"You never smile anymore," he had said one day, stopping in the middle of his explanation of how crucial the new Counter Shield technique he'd devised was to getting his most recent badge. "I miss seeing you smile." She remembered him having a look on his face like he was remembering what exactly she had looked like when he had seen her smile last, and not at all like he was embarrassed by the flirtatious nature of what he'd just said. Or perhaps that was giving him too much credit. Looking back on it with hindsight, he was probably thinking about dinner. Or Pokemon battles. Or anything really, provided it had nothing to do with being so nice to her. That was just too strange for Ash. Still, he'd kept up the line of questioning and he'd danced around it for a while, before his persistence finally cut her to the quick.

"I tell you what," she had offered, keeping her expression very even, trying to make it seem for all the world that her lack of a grin was apparently due his mediocre performance. "I'll smile for you when I hear you've won your next badge."

She'd thought maybe he would scowl at her words, but the way he'd beamed at that had brought her close to what she felt now. An unnerving flutter, a growing, panicky feeling that she struggled to muscle down. She'd thought then that it was because she had come so close to being caught, but now that she looked back on it with hindsight, she knew it had to be something else. He'd gone on to boast about how big her grin was going to be with the beating he intended to lay on the next gym leader in his path.

She'd gotten her braces taken off the following week and when he called next she grinned from ear to ear before he could even say a word. There was no romantic ending to the story, though. By that time Ash had apparently forgotten their arrangement entirely and spent the entire conversation complaining on and on and on about how his battle had been delayed for a whole day! Proof positive that Ash Ketchum was only as sweet as coincidence made him seem. She supposed it was best to just be thankful for the little things. Ash was Ash, after all.

Still, she thought, her mind threatening to creep back to the matters at hand presently, she was going to make him pay it in spades for forcing her take time off work to bike through bug-infested woods just to get involved in something so stupid. She decided to double up her pace. If she was going to knock some sense into the kid, she was gonna need all the time she could spare. Come hell, high-water, or Viridian Forrest.

* * *

"Yeah, crazy, right?" Holiday replied casually and Doc figured that it might have been because he was being told off and didn't care or that even more oddly, he was on some sort of strange associational arrangement with the Boss, who had only ever been cold and curt with him. Then again, Holiday did seem to have that effect on people. He could certainly break people out of their shell. Whether necessarily that would be to explode in rage at him, or to bust out laughing was up in the air.

He couldn't be sure either way, what they were talking about, since he'd gotten lost in thought at the prospect of going and climbing a tree. His recent shortcomings, as they always had, prompted self-improvement. It was the mark of a professional after all. He hadn't been able to lose the kid and so now it lied on his shoulders to get out and train harder and practice longer, until he improved his skills. It was a matter of personal standard, to him. Doc knew that if you wanted to be better than someone, you had to not only train until you improved your own skills, but until you totally surpassed theirs. Because while you were out there working, so were they.

The kid had managed to keep up the pace. And Trainers, they were _always_ trying to improve. So Doc had resolved in a few minutes of introspect that the next time they should meet, not only would he completely surpass the abilities he'd displayed in their first meeting, he would push himself to a whole new level of Parkour du Pokemon.

He glanced over at Holiday, after deciding that he would put his new training schedule into action as soon as they were off the road again, and awaited the end of his partners telephone conversation.

"Yep." Holiday confirmed, once their conversation had come to a pause. "We're en route now, boss."

"Oh, I'll tell him, alright." Doc didn't particularly like the look he was favored with, just then. Had Holiday really just told the boss about his embarrassing failure? Was Holiday really going to carrying along the lecture for him?

When he hung up, Doc couldn't help but ask, which of course just made his partner furious. Doc always figured that it was so much what he was asking, but just that he'd asked at all. Holiday hated having to explain things, particularly if he was prompted to. Doc figured it must have stolen some of his mystery, which was something Holiday seemed to enjoy having very much, even if it made him seem like a jackass more often than not.

Groaning loudly, Holiday rubbed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "No," the Nebula admin heaved a sigh. "Don't you think I have better things to do then tattle on you? I already gotta listen to you whine all the time, I sure don't need to invite him to. "

"Well what'd he want?" Doc asked, his irritation evaporating with the issue, as though it was never there at all, the indirect insult sliding straight off his back.

"He wanted you to put that Pidgeot you caught into PC storage," Holiday explained, after his anger too was expended. This taking somewhat longer than Doc's, his reply came almost a minute later.

"In storage?" Doc blinked. "Why? It seemed so well-trained."

"Exactly. That's because it had a trainer before you." Holiday said, crossing his arms as they walked ahead. "I had the boss check the Original Trainer number. Guess who it's registered to?"

"Who?" Doc asked, thoroughly confused.

"The kid." Holiday jerked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing back the way they had came towards Viridian City. When Doc made a face, he shrugged his shoulders. "Boss just said he wants you to put it away, Bro. It's not like you don't have a million other Pokemon."

Doc frowned, but it was not because he was upset. He was simply confused. Although, complaining and trying to get to the heart of the issue would dredge up the same sort of backhanded impatience from Holiday. Still, curiosity did get the better of him. "But how did I catch it if it was still registered to him?"

Surprisingly, Holiday smiled. "How much do you really know about the company you work for, Doc?"

Doc's frown deepened considerably in response. This only happened when Holiday felt like talking about something that interested him. Which was all well and good, excluding the fact that the things that interested Holiday were usually stuffy and intricate, and as a rule, only interested him, strictly. "Not as much as you, apparently." Doc acknowledged, grudgingly playing along.

"Naturally." Holiday corrected, his smile turning into a sneer. "Officially, we work for an Organization called Cipher Inc. The Team bought out the management structure of the company when they moved into Orre and saved it from bankruptcy by diversifying and expanding it's interests."

"Awesome. Thanks for the_ boring _corporate history lesson," Doc replied said with slight disgust, as he tried to stop the avalanche before it started. "What does that have to do with what I _asked_?"

"I'm _getting_ to it," Holiday shot back testily. "The reason the Boss made such a huge effort to seize control of Cipher was to lay hands on the advanced technologies they'd been developing over the last decade. Among many, are the poke balls we stocked up with before we came out here."

Doc took a second to appropriate the one from his belt that held his newly caught Pidgeot. He didn't seem all that impressed, which made Holiday appear rather miffed. "It looks like a normal poke ball to me."

"And it does to anyone else, too. Therein lies it's brilliance." He flicked his finger idly in the direction of the device, as though he were issuing a physical riposte to the assessment. "But those poke balls have gone through a Snagem Machine."

"Snagem Machine." Doc quirked a heavy brow. "_Seriously_?"

"I didn't name the thing!" Holiday shouted, his tanked patience making itself apparent. "Will you just shut up and let me finish?"

Doc rolled his eyes, and made an inviting motion to his partner.

"_Fuck_, man, it's like pulling teeth with you!" Holiday growled, forgetting his place for a moment, as he tried to express the proper amount of disappointment in Doc's behavior before coming back with a long sigh.

"The Sna-" he began, but thought better of it, with a warning glare. "The device, rather than fundamentally altering the way a poke ball works, which might set off it's internal security protocols, precisely warps the preexisting laser-impulse emitter lens that is typically used in the capturing mechanism of a poke ball to create a non-linear optical effect just strong enough so that the signal it emits is distorted in such away that the authentication bits that are typically passed along within the encrypted data that is sent from the capturing circuitry, to the micro-storage unit of the poke ball itself, can no longer be used to reference the Pokemon's tag data against the international Dex database. In this way, it exploits a Boolean fail-safe built into the database server itself. Normally, the matching data would cause a confirmed negation to return in the poke ball's computing logic and disallow the capture. Instead, the database program returns a exhaustive number of permutations on the corrupted data it's given, which eventually sets off the loop-escape counter and the useless bits are simply thrown away once the database randomly generates a new entry, for the sake of avoiding a system memory leak." As Holiday explained himself, he gesticulated in a clarifying manner hoping Doc would just nod in understanding, but instead he just continued to gently shake his head from side to side, lean backwards and stare wide-eyed.

Simply put, this was why Doc hated when his partner went into explanation mode. The goofy-haired administrator liked to use a lot of technical jargon when it just wasn't necessary, to make himself sound smart and probably for no other reason. It didn't help that the boss was one of these types too, and listening to the two of them toss around scientific terms like it was vaguely masturbatory made him lose faith in intelligent people everywhere. Weren't smart people supposed to make complex things simple? "Look, I know you're the head of the research department and everything, but could you just work with me a little?"

Holiday wracked his brain. Though he felt it was not inconsiderable, Doc regularly put his powers of simplification the test. Sadly, while engineering was his strong point, enthusiasm was not."It breaks the poke ball a little bit, so that it doesn't work the way it's supposed to." He summarized dryly, with haste.

"Why is_ that_ such a huge accomplishment?" Doc asked, knitting his brows.

Holiday slapped a hand over his forehead. "Because you can catch other people's Pokemon with it, dude."

"Why didn't you just say that?" Doc flung both of his arms out incredulously.

"I DI-" Holiday swallowed his explosive outburst and turned it into a long nasal snarl, before issuing a response, at his partner, who was now laughing. "I fucking hate you, Doc."

* * *

"He might get little pieces of it back eventually, but I doubt he'll ever remember the whole thing," a murky voice said in the black, and there was a burst of white, like someone pointing a very bright flashlight into his eyes, then nothing. "Whatever it was, they got him with it pretty good. When I found him he was drooling all over himself."

There was a murmur of dissatisfaction, the source of which he could not adequately define.

"At this point, I think the fact that he can remember what he was doing last week is pretty fortunate, Looker. We're just going to have to live with that. It's best we cut our losses now, anyways. This could have been worse." The light in his eyes reappeared and then flashed away, revealing the same nothing it had before and he felt a sensation somewhat like a hand resting on his arm

"You did a good job, Ketchum. I'm sorry we couldn't get 'em. Try and take care of yourself, kid. I'll see you around," another voice told him, giving him a gentle shake that jarred him back to consciousness.

It was past noon. The sun was glaring down on him through the treetops. It was Pikachu who was tugging on the sleeve of his shirt.

Ash sat up and tried to rub the weariness from his face with the ball of his hand, which would have gone far better if he hadn't been holding something in it. As it was, he poked himself in the eye with an business card. He glared down at it with, squinting in dull pain. It had someone's phone-number on it: Detective Penny. No relation. On the back was a hand-written message.

"_The case is shot, but Penny's promised to keep an eye on Mark for us and make sure those characters don't come back looking for trouble. After you've had some time to rest, give her a call. Maybe you'll remember something._"

He thought about it.

Nope.

He threw the card to the side carelessly. He didn't remember squat. He didn't remember it after three solid hours of scrutiny and medical inspection and he didn't remember it now. They'd told him he wasn't in trouble, but boy it sure felt like it. He didn't like getting jerked around like that at any rate, and definitely not over something so ridiculous as cops and robbers. He was pretty sure he would remember being a deputy. He was almost positive he'd remember some of the crazy stuff they were talking about. The fact that Pikachu had backed it all up gave him some reason to believe what they were saying, but in the end it didn't make a bit of difference whether it had actually happened or not if he couldn't remember it.

He'd pretty much decided that it was better that way, anyhow. As far as he knew, he was supposed to be working on starting a training expedition, and the whole thing sounded like a really lousy way to start off a journey. If it had been anything but, he was sure he'd remember something from it, and the fact that he didn't made him ten different kinds of miserable. Still, there was something that kept his spirits up, and even though he couldn't adequately place what it was exactly, there was a certain expression floating around in his head, that spoke volumes to him.

_"Just persevere. You'll have a breakthrough eventually."_

What he really needed to do, he decided, was get out there and do some battling! No better way to improve that he could think of. Unfortunately for him, there weren't many battles to be had at the moment, being that he was secluded the middle of Viridian Forrest. Competitors didn't just appear out of thin air. Especially when you were as lost as he was.

It was a passing concern, though. First thing, he needed to get some real food. While he sized up the situation, he slumped forward and stuck a finger into his mouth, to pry a chunk of peanut out of the cap of his molar. He was getting kindof tired of candy bars. Having one for dinner last night had been a mistake. It had made his stomach hurt and now so did his teeth. For one reason or another, though, that was all that was in his backpack.

He glanced over at Pikachu, who had not stopped tugging at his sleeve since he'd awoken. "What is it?"

Pikachu smiled at him and pointed into his lap, where a handful of weird looking berries were piled on his sleeping bag. The strangeness of their appearance was lost on him. As long as they weren't filled with nougat and caramel, they would do just fine.

"Oh, awesome!" he cried. Pikachu had practically read his mind, it seemed like. Maybe he hadn't cared too much for the chocolate supper, either.

He merrily popped one of the berries in his mouth and instantly he regretted it. Reddish goop was quickly being scraped off his tongue. The berries scalded his mouth and stole his breath. The taste was a cross between being punched in the teeth and having his lips set on fire! "Blech!"

"Pi kaa!" Pikachu chastised in exasperation, shaking his head. The electric type grasped a berry of his own, as if to prove that his trainer was being childishly picky. Ash wiped his mouth with his forearm and watched in satisfaction as Pikachu spit the berry off in the grass with a similar display.

"What are these?" he gasped after coughing loudly. A murmur in his backpack, not too far away quickly informed him.

"Chople Berry:" explained Dexter, the automated voice of his Pokedex, from within the confines of the outer compartment, set off by their close proximity. "It contains a substance called capsaicin, that generates heat. It is said to contain so much that it can even heat up a chilly heart! The taste can be counteracted with lactose-heavy foods such as milk or chocolate."

After taking a moment to recover, with his mouth hanging wide open, tongue extended, he let out a little moan of disappointment. He never thought he would feel so upset about a seemingly good thing.

He reached out for his bag, and went to go open it's main compartment when his Pokegear went off. Flipping it open to check it, he saw that there was one unread message. He pushed the 'Read Now' button.

**Brock 12:31 – Hey Ash. Your mom gave me this number, since when I called she said you were already off on your big "solo journey."-** Ash didn't particularly like the use of quotation marks, but he kept reading.** -Just a heads up: I got in touch with Misty and let her know what you were up to. She's on her way to visit with you right now.**

He stood corrected. He could feel more upset about a seemingly good thing.

He mashed a few buttons on his gear and slammed it to his ear, completely forgetting the heat in his mouth. It didn't matter at this point, anyways. When the person on the other end picked up, it was only going to add volume to his screaming.

* * *

It had been sort of an awkward week for Brock. And it wasn't necessarily because he was essentially sitting on the couch of his 11-year old friend's home, zoning out to night-time television like a bum, or that he felt like all he'd accomplished today was getting in the way of Johanna's Coordinating classes, by asking so many questions. In his defense, a lot of the girls in the classes she instructed on the battlefield behind her house were really cute, so he was willing to think of all most any excuse to be out there, before Dawn and Croagunk made their appearance.

It was more the uncertainty of things to come, to be honest. As slick as his plan for getting Ash back to Sinnoh was, he wasn't positive it would work, and if it didn't, that opened a whole other can of worms. And it wouldn't just be Dawn's problem then, either. Previously, he hadn't given much consideration to what would actually become of him, once his younger companion went on his own way, and their group scattered to the wind. He had always sort of expected that one day, either he would suddenly have an epiphany about what he intended to do with skills as a Pokemon Breeder, or else that he would find a nice girl on their travels, and settle down to practice breeding of another sort. Unsurprisingly, neither had happened yet. So then, what exactly had he planned on doing? The thought was beginning to scare him a little bit. The idea of going back home to be a gym leader again did not appeal to him. He'd done that schtick before. Forrest liked it and was good at it. There was no reason why he should have to take over again. He wouldn't have minded going to see his family and all, but the idea of sticking around, after traveling for five years just didn't sit right with him.

It made his heart sink a little to think that he'd spent such a profound amount of his life on the road that it had changed him as a person. He had by no means been discontent with his role in life, when Ash had made that first fateful visit all those years ago. His father's return had freed him to go on a Journey he'd always secretly wished for, yes, but it was not as though he'd left his home with some great relief at having shrugged off the responsibility to the Gym and to his family. He loved his family very much and had never once resented his role as caregiver. Nor as a Gym-Leader to be honest. Simply being around so many Pokemon on a day by day basis at the Gym was a thrill. But still, the moment had presented itself, and he had jumped.

He'd just never expected that the Buneary Hole would be so deep, so to speak. That he wouldn't really feel content at home, if he decided to go back. He'd always imagined Ash as more that kindof kid. The kind that just plowed off into the great unknown as soon as they turned ten and never looked back until age and mileage forced them to. And really, he'd never wanted to be that person. He'd watched it happen to his parents, after all. They were never happy until just recently with their settled down lives because neither could get their minds around the fact that they hadn't made it as successful trainers. But now it seemed, in spite of that, the world had stuffed him full of a certain understanding and wonderment that would not fit into his tiny little shared bedroom back home. Worse yet was that out here, though he was loathe to admit it, he was practically without guidance. Even though he was an adult, he didn't really know what to do on his own, even in the knowledge that he wished to continue onward. He only knew that what he had seen, what he had done, it was not enough. He wanted to know more. Experience more. And honestly, he wanted to with his friend at his side. What made Dawn happy was all well and good, but he wanted Ash to come back as well!

About an hour ago he'd tried to get a hold of their friend again, but it was no good. Ash's mother had informed him that he was already out on his expedition and while she had offered up his new Pokegear number, Brock wasn't exactly sure what he was going to do. He'd decided it would probably be best if Ash knew what he was in for. There was less chance for bodily harm that way. Ash hadn't responded to his text message though and so he was still sitting here, clicking through channels and biting the inside of his lip, trying not to think about his life. If this was a competition of wills, it seemed like he and Dawn were trailing in the final period, while Ash nursed a significant lead.

The padding of socked feet behind the couch gave him cause to turn around in his seat. He turned and watched as Dawn leaned over the couch in a very casual way. Actually, casual wasn't quite the correct word, he thought. Careless was more like it. Dawn threw her upper body over the headrest and slumped over from the waist down, her legs dangling off the back end, while her arms crumpled uselessly onto the cushion. She just laid there like a limp noodle over the edge of a colander for several long moments, before he heard her grumble into the leather. "Has he called yet?"

Johanna, who had chosen this moment to appear, reached over her daughters back from behind just before he could respond and playfully tugged on her daughter's blue hair. "Don't climb on the furniture." Dawn did a wild somersault into the seat next to him, with a squeal of surprise. Satisfied at that, her mother continued on her way upstairs. "I'm going to bed now. Try not to stay up too late."

Quietly they both bid her goodnight, and turned toward the television. The last match of the Sinnoh League finals was on. They both hoped that Ash wasn't watching. One of the competitors was some rock-star from Johto, and the other was Paul. Ash's rival (or was it ex-rival now, Brock wondered) was putting the finishing touches on a win that would take him on to the championship round. In fact, they were shortly treated to the sight of Paul's Torterra taking out his opponents final Pokemon, a Jigglypuff, with a particularly intense Frenzy Plant attack.

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy." Dawn said sarcastically, as the crowd burst into a frenzy, and the camera closed in on Paul, whom visibly seemed only the slightest bit pleased with his victory. A very brief upturning at the corner of his mouth, and then nothing.

Brock decided it was best not to say anything, lest he say something passionate and untrue. He just shut the TV off, and sighed.

"So, have you heard from Ash?" Dawn asked, after a moment or two had passed in silence

Brock's Pokegear went off on the coffee table, interrupting him for the second time. He reached for it, but Dawn was there faster. "It's him!" She yelped, opening the phone and putting it to her ear. "Hey, what's up?"

The burst of sound was so terrible sounding that Brock practically cringed. As it was, Dawn slammed her head against the back of the couch with a thump, and thrust her hand away at full extension in an attempt to get as far away from the speaker as she could, and somewhere upstairs they could hear Johanna cry out "I thought I told you not to climb on the furniture, Dawn!"

"TRAITOR! TRAAAIIITOOOR!" the phone speaker distorted wildly, mostly drowning out the maternal warning, in spite of it's small size.

Dawn handed the 'gear to Brock, rubbing her abused ear. He took it with an embarrassed half-smile. "Hey, Ash." Brock answered innocently, after thumbing the button on the side of his gear to decrease speaker volume considerately.

"You sold me out!" Ash roared, still managing to be quite loud in spite of his adjustment.

"All's fair in love and war." Brock said complacently, switching the 'gear to his opposite ear, and beckoning Dawn in close, so that she could listen in next to him on the couch.

"Yeah, but this isn't either!" Ash complained, quickly scrambling to his feet and working to assemble his gear. He needed to be gone in a hurry, if he was going to give the Cerulean gym-leader the slip. He knew just how relentless she could be. Perhaps more than anyone.

"You left me no choice, Ash. I'm sorry." Brock said, though the tone told Ash that really, he was not.

"Do you have any idea what she's going to do to me, when she gets here?" The young trainer moaned, trying to get his sleeping bag stuffed back into his backpack.

"I can think of a few things. I heard from Tracey that she's been brushing up on karate or something over the past few years." The older breeder replied teasingly, casting a smirk in the direction of his younger companion who grinned in return.

Ash let out another howl of panic and anger, absently dropping everything he was holding onto Pikachu who zapped him in frustration.

"Oh, don't get so bent out of shape Ash." Brock admonished.

"Yeah, maybe she'll teach you some moves." Dawn added, shouldering in. Brock smothered a yelp of laughter.

"Yeah, the hard way!" He screamed back into the receiver, as he shook off the electrical discharge and helped Pikachu up, continuing his desperate bid to leave as quickly as possible.

* * *

Misty lifted her head high to the pained sound that echoed throughout the woods. Flying Pokemon for miles took to the skies, and all else was rendered silent in it's wake. She didn't know what was being screamed, or why, but she would've recognized that crackly pre-pubescent shriek anywhere. Ash was around here somewhere, and it was pretty obvious he was in trouble!

Planting her foot, Misty brought her bike to a grinding sideways halt that kicked dust out ahead of her over the edge of the hillside trail she was taking to cut down on travel time. She tried desperately to identify the source of the sound. It sounded like it might have come from the west, but she couldn't be sure. Her clenched gloves creaking against the handlebars, she waited tensely, hoping for him to sound off again.

Not far from her, Holiday groaned for perhaps the fourth or fifth time. "I am so tired of walking." The mood was beginning to sour significantly. Or, at least, become far less tolerable than it usual was. Which was to say that it would shortly begin to border on nuclear.

Doc rolled his eyes. It was all well and good to call him out for feeling cooped up in the cabin of a moving-truck for almost three days, but as soon as he had to walk for more than a few miles, he was free to start bitching just because there was no air-conditioning and he hadn't broken in his expensive designer shoes. It was pointless to try and explain any of that to the taller man, though. He would either eschew the argument all together, or point out some crucial flaw in it that made him seem like an asshole. Still, it had been Holiday's idea to take the bike trail instead of the hiking path, to keep out of sight.

Muffling a chuckle, Doc wondered if there was anything he could do to ease his partners suffering, or at least to shut him up, and then remembered that he did have something in his backpack. A sound in the distance caused him to perk, but Holiday was too irritated to notice, and Doc dared not bring it to his attention, lest his fellow administrator find something else to whine about.

"Here, bro. I forgot, I snagged us some grub before we split town, yesterday," he offered.

"At least you're good for something." Holiday retorted.

"Are you ever gonna let that go?"

"What do you think?"

With a sigh, Doc whipped his carrier around and dug out a crinkled white paper sack, tossing it at the other admin.

Holiday looked down at the greasy bag with moderated displeasure, before opening it. "This is two day-old cheeseburgers."

"So?"

"So?" Holiday shrugged. "So I'm asking you:" He dug in the bag and grabbed both of the burgers in one hand, before tossing the bag over his shoulder. "What did you think_ you _were going to eat?"

Doc flattened his expression and opened his mouth to say something, but then a thick cloud of dirk and dust fell over their heads, drawing their attention skyward after a moment of coughing and sputtering.

The duo looked up the embankment of the hill just in time to see a blue and pink blur bearing down on them like a meteorite. Misty likewise caught sight of them just as she'd reached the point of no return on her steeply downhill venture, and neither party could react fast enough.

The front tire hit Holiday right in the face and pitched the bike wildly at the fork, slamming the rest of it's bulk into Doc's midsection, hurling Misty though the air. The two Nebulae were laid out flat, while she took a direct flight down the hill and straight into the river with a scream of her own.

Doc was the first to recover and came to his feet, pushing away the carbon fiber and titanium contraption to get at his partner, who was holding his face and groaning into the dirt, next to his broken glasses. He heaved his friend off of the ground and inspected him. There was minimal damage done, aside from a red mark that would shortly turn into a purple bruise across his cheek from where he'd been hit by the fork, and pink tire-marks on his chin, which would likely do the same. Still it looked pretty painful. He'd just got the wind knocked out of him. Holiday was practically delirious, it seemed like.

The other participant in the collision was so far removed from them by their fall that it seemed a non-issue. It was at least ten meters of steep incline to get back up here from the river. While Doc was somewhat altruistic in nature, he hardly entertained the thought of being a good Samaritan, given the circumstances. Plus, it didn't seem like the sort of thing gangster-types were supposed to do, after all.

The formerly bespectacled admin shook his head angrily, as he was pulled to his feet. "Ugh." He articulated at last, after managing to spit the taste of tire-rubber out of his mouth, it seemed. "What the fuck was that?"

Doc let Holiday go as he put his feet back underneath himself, and shrugged "I dunno. Some kid on a bike. Didn't get a good look at 'em. Are you alright?"

Doc was surprised when, like a flash, his friend's mood changed drastically. Both of his eyes snapped open wide at the sight before him and a grin cracked across his face. "Who cares? Free bike!"

Holiday appropriated the downed bicycle with a sort of eerie glee, Doc noticed, straddling it testingly before bouncing in the seat. "Nice." he commented, admiring the bike for what it was worth. "Choice paint-job, too."

Doc just stood there in stupefaction, before Holiday nodded out ahead of himself. "Lets make like a Leafeon, and get the fuck out of here!"

Doc was torn between being left behind as his friend pedaled away, and showing up in Pewter City running alongside a grown man on a pink mountain bike, but he figured it would be best to be long gone before whoever that was got back on their feet.

For Misty, the recovery process was somewhat more involved. The first thing on her mind was of course, Marill, who had been sleeping in her backpack. She frantically wheeled around in the water to get at her bag, but it proved unnecessary. Marill bobbed up next to her, with a chirp of delight, evidently thrilled at the prospect of having a swim. She wished she could say the same, but even with that concern dismissed, there was little to put her at ease. She realized that she must've hit a snag on the way down. She couldn't feel her poke balls on her waist and as Marill's presence suggested, the contents of her bag were now the contents of the river.

She sighed as Marill spouted a Water Gun straight up into the air, in commemoration of the early morning dip. As the spray settled around her, she pulled her waterlogged bangs out of her eyes, and started looking around for her belt.

* * *

Ash let the phone drop away from his ear when he heard the yelp and then subsequent splash in the river nearby, along with the other things he was carrying, once he'd made sure Pikachu wasn't standing underneath him. He didn't know who it was, or what was going on, but it was pretty obvious they were in trouble!

"-I gotta go!" he hurriedly shouted into the receiver and cast it down on top of the rest of his things. He dove into his shoes and took off like a shot, in the direction of the noise, his Pokemon partner hot on his flapping shoelaces. His destination was at a sharp downgrade from where he'd chosen to camp, on a grassy, flattened out area, elevated from the forest floor. He let his legs slip out from under him, and took the rest of the trip on his thigh, kicking up dirt loosened from the spring thaw, as he slid down a ten foot slope. He made it to the bottom and ignored the sting in his forearm as it banged painfully off of of an outcropping root, picking up his sprint right where he'd left off as Pikachu made up the difference in a few nimble leaps.

Catching a tree that craned out over the water to slow his momentum, Ash peered around for what he could see. Following a billowing ripple back to his source, he spotted a red-haired girl face down in the water, and his heart leapt from where it had been pounding in his chest, to palpitate furiously in his throat.

His first reaction just a moment ago would have been to turn and run, but he couldn't even dare himself to entertain the thought now. Though he was not an exceptional swimmer, he jumped into the water with a crash. Even though for Ash it would have really made no difference whether the person he'd found in distress had been stranger or acquaintance, and even though he was no stranger to putting himself on the line when the situation demanded it, something about Misty's apparent duress caught him off guard in such a way that he forgot to even issue an order to his Pokemon companion, leaving Pikachu sitting there on the riverbank, blinking awkwardly for a second, before following after his trainer.

Pikachu did not see the urgency, though. But of course, he had seen something Ash had not in his haste. Just after Ash had dove head-first into the current, the girl out on the water came up for air, before dunking her head again. Still, if Ash was that eager to go say hello to their old friend Misty, Pikachu would not fault him for it. It had been a long time.

As fast as this series of events had seemed before, somehow, to Ash, they started happening a whole lot faster, the second he went to wrap his arms around his friend, and pull her back to the bank. For Misty they did too, but while Ash's disorientation was due to panic and surprise, hers was a practiced series of motions, that she had down to muscle memory.

_Right arm down, elbow in, to block the hug. Take wrist control with the left hand. _

_Pivot right. Plant left foot. Dip, then drive hip upward and back to lift._

_Pull forward hard. Clench with right hand, and dump with right leg._

Her assailant's legs kicked up a huge arch of water that rained back down over her head as she ripped him up out of the river and deposited him in front of her on his back, with a monstrous splash. Whoever it was came sputtering back up just a second later, shaking his head free of the surface, cap and face dripping as they bobbed there coughing. She saw that it was Ash, which gave her pause. She looked around rapidly as he recovered, but aside from the fact that they were both dripping wet in the middle of a river, nothing was really all that out of the ordinary.

"Oh good. You're alright," Ash managed first, as he slapped about in the water to keep afloat, evidently unconcerned that he'd been air-mailed. "I wasn't sure I'd be able to swim back to shore with you."

Whatever she would've had to say to that, whatever lengths he was willing to go to for a friend, however surprised she was to see him here, was stolen by the reality of the situation. She stood up to her full height so that he could see plainly.

"The water is only waist high." She deadpanned.

Ash looked down for a moment, and then straightened his legs out. He was a little upset to find that

"waist high" was "torso-high" on him, but he supposed that it was still relatively good news. He was genuinely relieved after all. "So what's with all the screaming then?" He asked, brushing past the unintentional slight.

Taken aback, Misty remembered that was why she was here, as well. Nothing seemed out of order, though, so what was his excuse? "I should be asking you the same thing."

Ash shrugged his shoulders, not really wanting to share the particulars. "I asked you first."

Misty, for the first time glanced back up the slope the way she had come. "I wiped out on my bike," she explained. "There were two guys walking on the bike-trail, and I couldn't get out of the way in time."

Ash blinked. "Are they _alright_?"

Misty arched her brows incredulously. "They shouldn't have been walking on the bike trail!"

"It's an honest mistake!" Ash shot back, even though he wasn't sure who he was defending. Maybe he just couldn't resist being contrary when it came to Misty.

"Yeah, honestly stupid." She pointed to the north and south, with a look of disgust. " There's big safety signs on both ends of the trail that say 'Bike Traffic Only', Ash!"

Ash thought about it. He did remember seeing something like that. Didn't feel right to let it go at that, though, so he added, "_Still_," before he let the matter drop, though he didn't elucidate exactly what he meant.

There was a good measure of silence that passed before either of them spoke again. At least human silence. Pikachu and Marill hit it off immediately and Pikachu, who had been all business on this trip so far, was eager to take up the opportunity to play and blow off some steam. Though he was by no means a comparable swimmer, he didn't let that stop him from joining in the fun.

It was hard for Ash to not feel jealous as he watched his partner swim about. Pikachu was having a blast with a Pokemon he'd just met, and here he was having a petty argument with someone he'd known almost a third of his life.

"Do you want some help?" He asked, hopefully, after staring for another long moment.

Misty, who'd began to feel the weight of his stare, perked nervously. "Uh, well," She began, trying to think up something good. She didn't exactly like the idea of Ash leering over her while she collected her personal belongings. "I lost my belt on the way down, but-"

"I could have Infernape use Dig to divert the water!" Ash said with a sudden burst of excitement, eager to have his own fun. Misty raised her eyebrows. Leave it to Ash to make the boldest move possible right off the bat.

"That's a good idea, but..." She thought of how best to put it. "It seems a little excessive. My belt is pretty heavy, so I'm guessing it's not going to wash downstream or anything." She pointed over to the bank, on the side from which she had come, hoping to distract his attention for the time being "Why don't you just go and see if you can find my bike?"

"Man, your stuff flew _everywhere_, didn't it?" Ash noted, looking at the cloud of her belongings that bobbed on the river around them.

Misty rubbed the bridge of her nose in irritation. "Yeah, but look, could you just-"

"What're these things?" He asked, picking up one of the square yellow packages floating on the surface of the slow-moving current, inspecting the crimped edges of it's plastic wrapper. Whatever it was, it was kinda squishy, like it had absorbed a bunch of water, he thought.

Misty made a strangled sound and heaved her backpack out of the water, before swinging it in one wide arc that batted the package out of his hand and collected the sum of them within it, like a fishing net. "I said go look for my bike, you _idiot_!"

While Misty dunked herself back under the water, mostly out of embarrassment, rather than any real desire to resume the search, Ash turned around slogged away, muttering to himself. Who needed her anyways?

When he made it out of the water, and onto the riverbank, he instinctively turned over his shoulder to call for Pikachu, but then changed his mind as he spotted the two Pokemon splashing about near the opposite side, having the time of their life. He stood there and dripped for a minute, before starting up the slope in his sloshy sneakers.

His footing slipped a few times, as was to be expected given the circumstances, but he made it to the top by clinging to small saplings and clawing at the ground, something that was much easier to do with his new gloves on. When he came up over the lip of the slope and onto the trail, he looked both ways. He could see this is where she had come from. The broken-over hedges, the deep, fresh trench dug by a bicycle crash was sufficient evidence, even to him. There was, however, one slight problem.

There was no bike here.

Knowing that this did not bode well, and never having been one to question unfortunate coincidence. Ash withdrew a handful of poke balls from his belt and cast them out in front of himself. Bulbasaur, Tauros and Kingler appeared before him, which caught him off guard, since he was expecting Staraptor, Infernape and Buizel. The last time he'd checked, he'd still had his Sinnoh team with him!

He rubbed his temple with the ball of his hand, and tried to think of when this might have happened and why, but it was no use. He imagined that this was what losing your marbles felt like. He shook his head and considered for a moment what he had to work with. No fliers. No good trackers. Bulbasaur was good for anything in a pinch, but he really needed a search-party, not a battle-group. All the Pokemon in this group were excellent, but they weren't as versatile as he liked. He'd been younger when he built this team and less experienced about what it took to make an all-purpose squad.

He smiled in spite of that thought. They sure did kick butt in a battle though! If he had favorites, which as a policy he didn't, Bulbasaur would definitely have been one of them. The surly little grass-type was the bread and butter of his original squad, to be sure and in spite of his size was a real bruiser, as the Frontier Brain Brandon had found out the last time he'd teamed up with the Seed Pokemon.

Tauros too had his fair share of exploits, and though he looked more the part of a powerhouse attacker, the bull Pokemon's real strength was in endurance. They'd spent weeks prior to his battle with Annabelle, simply running to build up their carido and staying power for their match. More than once, Corphish, Himself and eventually even Pikachu had fallen gasping by the wayside in the late afternoon while Tauros just kept chugging at full steam.

Kingler he had not seen in a while, but there was no denying that he owed Kingler in part for the only championship he had, even if his Orange Cup wasn't an official Pokemon League victory. That, and it's debut battle in the Indigo League, where it had evolved and dominated all of his opponents Pokemon, in spite of Brock and Misty's nay-saying. had pretty much cemented it as one of the toughest Pokemon he'd ever owned. He rather liked it when he and his Pokemon exceeded expectations. Gary could keep his freakishly giant Krabby!

"Did you find it yet?" He heard Misty call from down below and he gasped at having been pulled from his thoughts. He strummed his fingers against the back of his thumb calculatingly._ What to do, what to do, what to do?_

"Tauros, you go thatta way," He ordered, pointing up the trail. "I'll go thissa way." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Bulbasaur, you look around here." He spun his extended index finger finger in a circle, before turning to regard Kingler with a wide-eyed expression. "And you..."

"Is it up there or not, Ash?" Misty hollered up the slope at him.

"Go bug Misty," he said with sinister connotations before departing. The sound of all three of his Pokemon thundering off on their assigned tasks was pretty satisfying to him, and made him feel much more like himself. Not nearly as much as what came next.

"Wha—HEY! Give that back! Kingler! Ash, get your Pokemon! AAAAAASH!"

Ash laughed as he took off at a steady clip to look for her bike.

* * *

James leaned his head against the concrete wall next to his bunk and tried to relax. It was hard to. The good news was that the stuff you saw on TV made prison seem so much more seedy and cut-throat than it actually was. Of course, Jessie reminded him, they weren't actually in "prison", yet. This was just a detention center where they would be interred until their case was closed and a ruling was reached. Not that that unconcluded business held any hope for them. Their guilt had already been established. The remainder of the ruling would supposedly be looking at whether or not that guilt would or could be linked to Team Rocket or Silph Co. in any way.

"How long do you think, Jessie," he asked the bunk above himself, taking a moment to sniff, and clear his throat.

"I dunno, James." The defacto leader of their trio admitted quietly.

The Viridian district would do their thing and like always, Silph Co would dance out of the way and string them along. The last she'd heard, Silph Co was engaged in twelve or so lawsuits of various classes that had almost no hope of ever being brought to conclusion, because of this. Archer was quite the player and he was good at what he did. The bastard had played them pretty well too, after all. She wiped the moisture from her eyes.

"A few years, maybe?" She choked immediately after saying it, the thought alone almost being too much for her to bear.

James below immediately followed suit and just as they had many times previously that day. Meowth, who had been silently inspecting his filed-down claws likewise joined in, and they tried not to let the sound of their crying escape the confines of their cell. By the time it was all said and done, James had snatched ahold of Meowth and gripped him tightly against his cheek and Jessie had rolled off her bunk to embrace the two boys with far more ardor than she'd had in some time.

"At least we still has each 'udda," Meowth bawled.

"Yeah, we'll make it through this." Jessie promised, letting go of just one more sob. "One day this'll be one of our stories to tell."

James laughed in spite of himself, as he wiped his face with the sleeve of his orange jump-suit. "Yeah, I'll say, 'Hey Jess, do ya remember the time we got trashed on toilet-wine, and I got "_Only Arceus Can Judge Me_" tattooed across on my back?'"

Jessie snorted. "And I'll say 'Remember that time I bought and sold all the girls in D-bloc for three cigarettes, a contraband harmonica, and a week's worth of pudding-cups?'"

They all smiled weakly at each other, and decided that that would be enough. That as long as they had each other, they'd be alright.

* * *

"You look pretty silly sitting in the middle of the woods wearing that wetsuit. But I guess it was really smart to wear one." Ash said offhandedly, like he was actually giving her a compliment of sorts, which she could scarcely believe.

She frowned. Sometimes, Ash could piss her off to no end. Nevermind that he'd embarrassed the hell out of her, and failed to find her bike. Tauros, Bulbasaur and Kingler had come up with nothing, and neither had he. She was sure she was going to explode about that eventually but for now she let it ride, for his sake. So was that really what he was going to say, now that things had settled down, and they were actually in a position to speak freely? "Really? You haven't seen me face to face for almost three whole years, and that's all you have to say to me? I was smart for wearing a _wetsuit_?"

"Uh..." Ash pursed his lips together as he flapped his hat out a bit and pinned it onto the line where all of their other clothes were. He'd changed behind the combined safety of a tree and sleeping-bag shawl. His spare clothes were new and crisp, but otherwise identical to the black t-shirt and jeans he'd soaked through. He'd appropriated his jacket and hoodie, which he hadn't had time to throw on earlier in his haste and he was thankful for their warmth. Now if only his shoes and hat and gloves would dry out, he'd be in good shape. She'd trimmed down to her wet-suit, which, again, he still thought was pretty smart, but evidently, he was still missing something. Either that, or Misty had gotten crazier over the years, which he wasn't about to rule out.

"You have no idea how to talk to women, do you?" She assessed, rolling her eyes loftily in a way that Ash had never really cared for.

"Why, is there one around?" He blinked and glanced off to both sides theatrically, as he sat back down on the ground across from her.

This made her frown that much deeper. "You could start with an actual _compliment_, maybe."

Ash's eyes darted around around looking for something he'd remembered wanting to comment upon earlier. He spotted them on the clothes-line he'd set up, after a few moments of silent searching. He figured she was fishing for a complement on her outfit, after all. Girls went crazy for that stuff.

"Those fingerless gloves are pretty awesome." Ash said finally, indicating them with a point. "Finally decided to take a page out of your favorite trainer's book, huh?" he prodded, crossing his arms confidently.

Misty couldn't believe it. Was he seriously going to talk himself up? She'd never heard anyone make such a backhanded compliment, not to mention follow it up. "Yeah, Ash. You're the only trainer to _ever_ wear fingerless gloves." She made sure that her voice was saturated with sarcasm, so that Ash couldn't possibly miss it.

"The only_ cool _trainer," he argued, and she couldn't help but laugh in spite of the fact that she was shaking her head.

"Those are just biking gloves, anyways. It's not like I wear them all the time."

"Maybe you _should_. They are pretty awesome." he persisted, paraphrasing himself as he shrugged away her words. Even though she wasn't particularly interested in his fashion advice, she wasn't so persistent as to try and deny his compliment three times, no matter how awkward it was.

"So that's what you got going on now, huh?" She asked indicating his leather athletic coverings, hanging beside her own. "Switching it up?"

"Mom made them for me," he said casually, and she nodded acceptingly.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence then, that hung stagnant in the air before either of them spoke again. The sounds of the woods and the nearby river seemed to creep in from all sides and the noises of Marill and Pikachu barreling over one another in a game not unlike some combination of leap-frog and tag seemed suddenly more rambunctious than normal. To Ash it seemed like a drum roll building to crescendo. In preparation for his death-defying stunt, it seemed like.

Misty spoke first, instantly putting him on the defensive. "You know why I'm here, don't you?"

"I know why you think you're here," Ash shot back quickly, having expected little else to come of this.

"So then I take it you don't see anything wrong with ditching your friends on another continent," she countered testily, but not so harshly that it was readily apparent to their Pokemon that a fight was about to break out.

"I do, and I already apologized for it. But that's not why you're here. You're here to try and make me change my mind." Ash protested in a muted snarl, driving straight to the core of the issue. He expected her to have a snappy comeback, but instead she turned to her Marill and smiled a very phony looking smile..

"Marill?"

"Marill, Marill!" The water-type Pokemon squeaked and dashed back to her side, from where it'd been digging around with Pikachu.

"It looks like Ash needs kindling to start his campfire," she explained, pointing to the pile of chunked up deadwood that had burned out in his sleep last night. She was right. There were several large pieces of wood, but nothing to start a fire hot enough to ignite them. With no fire-types between them, that left only one option.

"Kindling," she continued, repeating herself carefully. Her Marill had only evolved very recently from it's baby stage and even though it was very sharp, its behavior was still very child-like, especially it's attention span. Marill would often disregard commands if they were overly complex, or dull. She partially blamed herself for coddling it so much as an Azurill, but, she supposed, in a way it had been her surrogate for Togepi at the time and well, old habits died hard.

"Little dried up sticks, Marill. Can you get some?" she asked hopefully.

"Marill!" her Pokemon chirped happily seeming to like the idea and forgetting herself momentarily the Cerulean gym-leader grabbed Marill in a hug.

Ash personally, had always thought the maternal instinct act was a little out of place on her. Other than that little quirk she was a perfect brat. But she really loved her Pokemon and that was no act, so he guessed that was okay. He figured he should at least roll his eyes, but he was forced to looked over as he felt a familiar tug on his sleeve.

"Pikapi," his friend implored urgently.

"What's up?"

"Piika chu ka-chu." His Pokemon pointed towards Marill, making it quite obvious what he wanted.

"Uh." He thought about it for a second. "Sure. Yeah, sure you can help." He knew he was signing his own death warrant, here, but he could see that Pikachu was enjoying having someone to play with and he couldn't really bring himself to be the bad guy, even if he wasn't having any real fun.

"I was just about to ask if you would help, Pikachu!" Misty said with a grin, that once more seemed very insincere.

Of course you were, he thought. He watched the two mouse Pokemon take off, before standing abruptly and moving to walk away, before this all got started.

She caught him though. "Where do you think you're going?"

Ash shrugged. "Oh, you know..." he muttered, pointing off into the distance. _As far away from you as I can get_, he finished silently to himself.

"I think we ought to have a discussion about this."

"There's nothing to discuss," he said coldly, as he kept walking. "You're not my mom."

He heard the sound of a poke ball popping open behind him but he didn't turn to look. Her voice took on that quality that he had long ago associated with some of the only deep-seated resentment he held for anyone. "You're not going to like me if I have to chase after you Ketchum."

He groaned and slowed his pace a bit, but kept walking. _Who says I like you now?_

He wondered, as he felt his feet leave the ground and wave about uselessly midair, whether he would turn to find Gyrados holding him aloft by his shirt-collar, and Misty glaring disapprovingly, or the exact opposite of that. She was pretty tall now, and there was still a crick in his neck reminding him of her earlier feat of strength. He was somehow thankful when it turned out to be the former.

As he was swung around to look at his blue-eyed nemesis, he sighed very hard. And he kept sighing until he felt like he had pushed out every bit of air in his lungs and tried to sigh more when it felt like he hadn't pushed out all the frustration and anger he felt like he needed to. It was just stuck there. There was no relief coming back in, either. The fresh air didn't untangle the knots in his chest and it didn't alleviate his stress. It was just air.

"Put me down," he commanded, though whether Misty or the toothy monstrosity holding him off the ground, he wasn't sure. He desperately didn't want to have this conversation, but if he absolutely had to, he preferred it on the ground. He was allowed back onto his socked feet, but Misty didn't recall her Pokemon. She would keep that piece in play, of course. The serpentine Pokemon coiled itself around them, encompassing them and nearly the entire campsite, as though it were a Seviper guarding it's eggs. Although, in keeping with the metaphor, he felt like a Tailow hatchling mixed up in the clutch. Gyrados' massive flank formed a circular barrier from which he was not likely to escape, and danger surrounded him within it.

"So what's your big plan, Ash?" Misty asked, leaning casually against her massive Pokemon and patting it approvingly just below it's crest. "What's so important that you'd up and decide to leave your friends? Brock told me you plan to train solo, so lets hear it." She held out her hand, invitingly.

He felt a lot of things flare up at her words. Anger, mostly but that was nothing new. But also, there was the same sense of regret that had welled up in him many days ago now, at a bygone opportunity. Ash knew he wasn't far along enough in his life yet to feel bitter about much of anything, but the fact that she had so quickly picked at the one place she could get to him, the one place his whole facade fell apart, bit at him. Why was it so easy for other people to make him feel like crap? He geared up to tell her a fib, because the truth was honestly beginning to hurt his feelings.

He didn't have one. He was flying blind, and he just didn't know how to get himself in line, and furthermore, he knew that if she found out she would rip him apart, so he thought up a good lie to tell her, just so she would leave him alone.

But before it came out of his mouth and as it rolled through his head, it gained weight like a snowball, and it just kept growing and growing, and he added more and more of his needs and his desires to it, and it they all stuck! It had started as fabrication, yes, but didn't all plans? What began as a lie made it to his lips as truth. Who knew it would come to him so easily? Who knew it would just be so damn simple? That all he needed was for someone to get on his case about it!

"Pikachu and I are gonna take another shot at the Indigo Conference."

It was simple, but it was a plan. The first plan he'd been willing to offer up, and while it was no multi-step program, he felt like it would go a long way towards getting his career back on track in the long term, getting his confidence back up in the short term, and as a resolute goal, put him on the path to becoming Champion, and eventually, a Master, as was his true goal, all along.

"What are you_ crying_ for?" she asked, taking the wind out of his sails.

"I'm not!" he shouted at once, and looked away, for posterity, blinking rapidly. He hadn't noticed the moisture coming to his eyes and he certainly didn't need or want that sort of attention. "Don't be dumb."

Shaking her head and waving the issue off, Misty surged on him, stepping forward so that she was practically standing on the tips of his toes. "Remind me again why you have to do this alone?"

He backed off, flustered by the fact that he had to tilt his head back so far to look her in the eye."It's not for anyone but me to decide!"

"So that's what it boils down to, then!" Misty shouted, continuing to press him. "We're your friends until you decide it's inconvenient!"

"What's that got to do with _anything?_" he roared back. "I'm friends with everybody, thick and thin! I haven't stopped being anybody's friend!"

"You could've fooled me, Ash!" Misty countered defiantly. "I've never heard of an decent friend acting the way you are right now."

"Acting?" Ash cried, "_Acting_?" He angrily strode past her to the clothesline. "If I was really such a bad friend, would I do this?" He snatched his hat off the clothes line. "Here! Take it!"

He held it out at arm's length. This was his Pokemon League Expo hat. He'd spent about five full days filling out stacks upon stacks of post cards with his mother to get it. That had been years ago, when he was eight or just turning nine. He remembered the day it'd arrived in the mail, smelling like fresh thread and the promise of a Pokemon Journey of his own, if he could just wait one more year. It'd been stiff and crisp against his head, then. He had to expand the adjustable band to it's last tab to fit it onto his head now, and the mileage it had seen made it limp, and a different sort of comfortable, but it still had immense personal value to him. He didn't like to part with it, but he wouldn't have anyone calling him a bad friend.

She just ignored it, and kept drilling him though. "You're acting like a little kid!"

"Will you just close your big mouth for a second, and take the hat?" He shook it between them as though hoping to catch her attention. Instead, she only glowered over it at him.

"I don't want your stupid hat. I want you to stop acting like a moron!" She stamped when she got mad. balling her firsts, and shouting, as he vividly remembered her having always done.

"Do you even get that I'm trying to be _nice_ to you?" he asked, not even pretending for a moment, that she was listening.

She wasn't of course. She was so caught up in telling him off, that she wasn't even paying attention anymore. "You've got a lot of friends you're turning your back on, Ash! Me included. People who care about yo-"

She stopped then, because something happened, that didn't happen all that often. At least, not in any real capacity. While Ash did frequently lose his cool, while did know quite well how complain, and while she certainly didn't think there was anyone who would accuse him of always being an elegant loser, it was rare that Ash got truly furious at someone. And so it was a little surprising when his outburst stopped her cold, as he threw big open-mouthed syllables at her, his face was turning turning purple with the effort.

"Will you SHUT UP!" he hollered, louder than she remembered him ever being, even at his most obnoxious, forcing her to deflate visibly and slink back onto her shoulders away from him.

Tapping all four fingertips of his right hand, on the crest of his skull, he reiterated his simple point, articulating how thick she felt she was being, even at a moment where he needed her to be patient, more than ever. "I haven't turned my back on anyone. _Especially_ you! You don't even have anything to do with this!" He brought the same four fingers to bear, sending his hand sailing off over his shoulder, indicating a vastness of wide open space. "There's something I gotta prove to myself out there and I have to do it alone. If you can't understand that, then you're wasting your time here."

This point seemed to, if not take the wind from her sails then at least force her to contain her own irritation with him, rather than fling it into his face.

In reality, it was just that it had bit at her, the same as her criticism had bit into him. She didn't even have anything to do with this. She'd felt that way earlier and she supposed that now, he'd just confirmed it for her. That was her lot now, she supposed. Just because she was his best friend three years ago didn't mean much now, after all. At least that was what he seemed to be trying to say in not so many words. Really, what effect could she even pretend to still have on his life? Sure, they spoke on the phone every so often, but what did that really mean? She suddenly began to feel very foolish for agreeing to come out here at all. To pretend for as long as she had that she was still a part of this. To pretend like she had any right to act on Brock and Dawn's behalf. She felt very stupid and very hurt.

He thought he'd finally put himself back on the winning side with that, but instead she stared at him angrily for a moment and then turned away, driving her shoulder up high. He was afraid she might leave, at first, and nearly jumped to stop her, but her footing remained firm and she crossed her arms contrarily, so he kept going. "It's not like I come and tell you how to run your Gym! I don't come and tell you how to get along with your life!"

He watched her slink away again, moving further from him, which gave him a moment of pause. He felt like he should be the one upset. How dare she come hunt him down, to make light of his efforts, and furthermore, to tell him he was being a fool. That this, his last concerted attempt at molding himself into a cast befitting his dreams, was the fevered delusion of some selfish kid- and then to pretend that he was the one being mean to_ her_!

She snapped back at him though, surprising him."I wouldn't _need_ you to!"

She redoubled her efforts, incorporating a rough shove into her otherwise verbal retaliation. She crossed her arms then, as she watched the younger boy backpedal to regain his footing. She decided that if Ash wanted to say that she was no longer of any importance, that she would be just as uncompromising and cold. Determined to lash back, she felt that familiar feeling she'd always felt, then they'd traveled together so long ago. The feeling that told her deep down in her gut, that winning this argument was crucial and to not do so, would mean certain humiliation, for what reason, she did not know. His response, though, caused this feeling to deflate and vanish almost instantly, like the immature thought that it was. With a mixture of scorn and wonderment, she gave consideration to the possibility that maybe she hadn't grown up as much as she'd hoped. Or at least, not as much as he actually had.

"Of _course _you don't!" He grasped handfuls of his hair, and pulled on them. "So why is it that _you_ could leave at any time, and it was okay with everyone, but if _I_ do it, I'm the bad guy!"

She felt like it was all she could do to blink rapidly and keep a small amount of moisture from coming to the corner of her eyes. It wasn't really that she hadn't considered the possibility of the argument being turned on her for just such a reason, but rather the actual legitimacy of Ash's feelings on the matter. It wasn't actually as though anyone had seemed to begrudge her leaving, at least not insomuch as she did. Hell, the way she'd felt at the time, it had almost seemed as though Ash was relieved to see her depart, like a person would a splinter or a rock in their shoe. She'd found out that the truth was a little better than all that morbidity, sure, but it hadn't really ever crossed her mind that Ash might have been even the slightest bit angry about it. The suddenness of it. The immediacy. Was it really all that different than what was happening now?

Her sisters had called without warning or advance notice. She had left their company just as immediately. She'd said goodbye of course, and therein their situation was different, but really, what more comparison really needed drawing? Dawn had been traveling with Ash since her journey had started, she knew. Having Ash around as a traveling partner was all she'd ever known as a coordinator. Misty was pretty sure that Brock was taking the news a bit better, after having willingly parted ways with them, more than once, but it probably stung him too to know that Ash wanted to stand apart, after so long. Had Ash and Brock really been put in all that different of a bind, when she'd left them behind? If she'd meant half as much to the boys, as they'd meant to her, then no, they really hadn't. And to make things worse here she was, trying to pretend she was beyond egress. Was there anyone, truly, who was considering Ash's feelings? Not just now, but how he'd felt towards all of them? Nobody, really liked being cast aside, and nobody really liked to leave their friends behind, right? No matter how cavalier Ash seemed to everybody, he was hurting too.

She could see it all over his face. His expression was tired, more than anything, like the crumbling facade of some old building that just had too much steel in the supports to give way completely, it's brick and mortar cracking and caved. Like he'd been trying to smile for too long, and just couldn't manage it very well anymore. Or worse, had been trying to keep from crying for too long, and was now teetering on the edge due to her own abuse. She looked away when Ash's expression softened at her extended stare, noticing her examination.

"Do you _resent_ me, for leaving?" She asked quietly, so quietly that to Ash, he seemed to have to strain to hear it in the vacuous absence of their yelling.

He let his body flap weakly, now no longer able to pretend that sighing would benefit him. "How _could_ I?" He shook his head adamantly, to dismiss the notion. "You wanted to go and be the Cerulean Gym Leader!" He pointed off into the distance, in recognition of the magnitude of the ideal. "It's what you were born to do, right? Water Pokemon Masters don't get to be Water Pokemon Masters just by_ thinking_ real hard about it! It's not like I could say 'Oh, hey, wait, I thought we were friends, forget about doing what makes_ you_ happy keep traveling with me!', could I?" Unerringly, he answered the question for her. "No. Because that'd make me a bad friend. Which I'm NOT!"

She was honestly taken aback. When she'd left the company of the boys that day, it had been because she was obligated. Not because she was interested in pursuing her dream, but rather, that she had a responsibility to maintain their family's gym. It had only been later that she had found out how much enjoyment she truly got from it. The immense personal satisfaction that came from every battle, every win, every new experience, not to mention the fulfillment of actually leading the gym itself, having something of her own that was truly separate from her sisters and learning more and more about Pokemon, and herself she went. She hadn't really discussed this at any length with Ash, though, because she'd assumed that it would be above his notice, or of no real interest to him. But she realized that in hindsight, that really that assessment had been unfair. What was more in his theater of understanding, really? She figured that he must've just noticed on his own. Maybe there was a lot more than she'd really given him credit for. Than a lot of people did. She regretted that it took something like this to change her perception. As much as she'd grown up, Ash had grown more.

She felt truly bad now, watching him seethe silently at her, with an anger of a scraped wound. She sighed her own sigh, that likewise did not seem to clear away all of her uneasiness. She knew she looked like a stupid kid and her powerful, if unintentional blush at his words wasn't helping anything.

"How do you do it, Ash?" It was his turn to be surprised now. Her tone was not sarcastic as he expected it to be and that alone smothered his determination to argue. Her follow-up altogether crushed it, just as his had crushed hers."...What in the world makes you the way you are?" she asked, changing the subject altogether. The question was way too ambiguous to answer. The reeling feeling he got from having the tide turned on him so quickly did not help.

"What do you mean?"

Turning again to face him, he could see an unusual look in her eyes. One he rarely saw. One that he'd seen so infrequently, that he could not adequately define it. "In my head, I know you should just be some kid with dirt on his face and a dream too big to hold on to," she began, her tone becoming halfheartedly derisive, as she began her explanation. It's connotations did not miss Ash, who sputtered in retaliation.

"H-Hey!"

She just waved him off and cut his rebuttal short, not at all eager to begin again. "You're not though, Ash. You're special! In some way I don't even get!" She looked vaguely ahead and shrugged. "I'm not sure you really understand that!" She frantically worked her hands in pace with her words. "You've already done things nobody else could have done. Huge things!" Saving the world many times over, aside, Ash had still accomplished more than any handful of trainers that she could think of. "But you just keep going after more." She shook her head, and began pointing in random directions, mimicking the way he'd gesticulated earlier when talking about her career. "But no, you've gotta try and be the champion in this region and that region and that region! You keep trying to get higher and you can't stand to fail! And when it happens..." She balled up her fist, and held it on display for him. "You just fight harder, even if it takes everything you've got." She would make no mistake in realizing that was what was happening now.

Ash didn't think he really had a good answer, if it really was still a question. He felt childishly willing to take credit for all that but his new found direction caught him, and gave him pause. He couldn't just say 'It's because I'm so awesome.' even though he wanted to, anymore. It didn't make sense, given what he was trying to accomplish. If he was _really_ going to train solo, he had to be subjective, objective even, especially about himself. There wasn't going to be anyone around to point his failings out for him. There certainly wasn't going to be anyone to hear him gloat. It was a rough, uncoated pill indeed, but it would be better to get over these sorts of things now than later on when it would cost him.

After a moment of serious thought, he replied. "It's just how I am...But I don't think that makes me so special. Besides, I think you're forgetting how may times I practically killed myself doing all that stuff." Resignedly, he shrugged. It was a start. It was the truth at least. A couple times he really had been on the technical side of dead.

She paid little heed of his answer though, being that she already intended to form one of her own. "I used to think it was because you were so full of yourself you couldn't stand the thought of anyone beating you. Ash Ketchum had to be the best no matter what happened." She took a step closer to him, and re-folded her arms. He expected the worst, because that was all he could remember expecting out of her. But she surprised him again, to such an extent that it was practically an open-handed slap to his sensibility, rather than to his integrity, as he'd imagined it to be.

"Now I'm starting to believe it's because you already are the best and you just want to scramble to the top somewhere, so that everyone can finally see it." When she said it her arms fell together, bundled in a nervous knot in front of her waistline, as she stood looking into his Stantler in the headlights expression. Was she saying to much?

Ash felt his eyes go wide, as hopeless fragments of this new found "maturity" fell away like poorly adhered wall-tile. He felt himself fumble in the face of this open praise concealed within a package he'd expected to contain, at best, criticism. He felt himself scramble for an unnecessary parry. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Worst of all, he felt himself flush bright red. Instantly, he felt ten again. When was Misty ever so nice? When did she ever know so much about him and how he worked? When had she ever cared to learn? Had she always cared so much about how he felt and what he wanted? He didn't want to think he'd ever refused see something like this before, but he did seem to recall suddenly, stingingly, that there had been several occasions where she'd offered to help him, and he'd callously batted that aside. He grumbled a little bit, because he could think of nothing else to say or do that made any kind of sense.

Quietly, she made him a promise, deciding that if she'd gone too far there was really no turning it around anyways. "I know what this is about Ash. I know you're upset. It's alright to be. But you don't have to do this."

He stammered at her, suddenly, inexplicably angry again. "I'm not- This isn't about- I know I don't _have_ to-"

"I know." She said soothingly. "I'm just telling you that you've got nothing left to prove. Not to-" She stopped herself from saying 'me', "-us. We've all been friends for a long time, Ash."

He nearly coughed, as the fire in him went out just that fast. Replacing it now, was a vast and growing tension of unknown origin. He felt a tugging at his palm. When he looked down, he found her hand on the hat, endeavoring to fulfill his earlier request. She wanted it. He tried to think of something to say in kind as his hand snapped open, something accepting, something that would make him seem like less like how he felt, which was an Idiot, but nothing came. She slid the cap over her head sideways, so that her ponytail would stick through above the adjustable strap. She was smiling now but it was slight, he noticed. And that look in her eyes was still there.

"I told Brock and Dawn I'd come out here and try and get you to see things their way." She raised her hands slightly and displayed open palms. "But you're right. I can't _force_ you to do anything."

"I was actually kinda hoping you'd come back here to Kanto, after you came home from the Sinnoh League. I guess that makes me a little bit of a hypocrite." She bobbed on her feet lightly and angled herself so that she was not facing him directly. He knew he was being prompted. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he was so acutely aware of it that the fact that he could not seem to come up with a rebuttal, to the delicate jab she placed so eloquently to serve as a springboard for further conversation, that it was actually beginning to cause him to clench up.

His silence was beginning to drive Misty to panic as well. She'd said too much! Gone too far! Theirs was supposed to be a relationship built on a solid foundation of cooperative rivalry so sharply honed and meticulously crafted that it seemed like they hated each other at any given moment- not this! She'd crossed the boundary! But something strong had egged her on to this point, and she knew just what it was. Her crush, a monster she'd long tried to hide in the basement, wanted out. She knew it was not the right time, not nearly, but it was much less convinced.

"I've... really missed you, Ash." The words edged their way out of her mouth before she could muscle them back down, forcing her to suck in a breath.

As he stood in dumbfounded silence, his mouth glued together as though he'd just crammed the remaining ten RAGE bars into his face all at once, the angle at which she was facing him was quickly becoming less and less acute. He caught one last glance from her as she turned completely to the side, and he truly wanted to say something, but he really, physically, could not manage it. Instead he just nodded pitifully.

When he was still silent, she pulled the visor of his cap sideways a little to shield her face. Her movement was deliberate, and designed to hide her expression, so that he could not see the enormous blush of embarrassment and shame on her face.

They were both deeply relieved when they heard Pikachu and Marill's voices, confused at the presence of a Gyrados blockade of their return to camp.

* * *

Consummate black. Darkness. Absolute, because it was necessary. Because it was demanded.

That was all that could be seen within the containment cell, inside the lowermost laboratory level of the Realgam tower's underground complex, which was indeed saying something, since the subterranean portion of Cipher's sprawling headquarters represented an greater portion of it's whole than did the towering superstructure that was it's trademark.

This was where Cipher kept their real technology. The devices which were actually something worth considering, instead of just the failed pet-projects of second-rate scientists and the creature-comforts of corporate figureheads with too many engineers in their employ with too much time on their hands. The reaction chamber that Cipher had once used to make Shadow Pokemon was so advanced that it's workings bordered on magic. It's contents now held far more importance and it's workings were, because of it, even more complex than they had been since inception. He suspected that Holiday was not yet aware of what significance his modifications to this machine had actually had, only their specification. Kazuo wondered if was fortunate, or unfortunate that he was the only individual burdened with the knowledge of what was now currently occupying it.

The only thing that grounded him from near complete sensory deprivation was a single light that winked silently before him. It was status display override light. The breaking and connecting of a simple circuit, passing just the smallest current through a light emitting diode. It was not strong enough to cast any real light, however. Not strong enough to alert his eyes to anything around him. Just enough to be noticed.

It was important to notice, because it was blinking out a message in Morse code.

The chamber's occupant didn't know Morse code, originally. But it had come to. Not because he had taught it, he was sure. Because it had deigned allow itself to know. The reason it had not known, was certainly not because it was stupid. Not even remotely so. The fact it had existed since the Precambrian era, according to carbon-dating, meaning that it predated Samuel Morse and his code by some five hundred million years had otherwise obviated the need.

M-A-L-E-A-D-O-L-E-S-C-E-N-T-R-E-T-U-R-N-S-H-O-M-E

"Yes, the way I understand it," he said, hardly daring to whisper toward the chamber. It was prone to quick changes, after all. How much of the reaction chamber did it take up now? Half of it? All of it? Was it creeping outside? It was possible that it filled this room, even now, working it's way out in all directions, now that the lights were out. He couldn't know for certain, at any rate, and shook himself back to the matter at hand.

N-E-X-T-P-H-A-S-E

"What do you prescribe?" he asked with reinvested confidence.

A-D-O-L-E-S-C-E-N-T-M-U-S-T-C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-E-A-U-R-A

"I'm not sure I understand."

M-U-S-T-A-B-D-I-C-A-T-E-T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G-M-U-S-T-I-N-S-T-E-A-D-C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-E-A-U-R-A

He felt his brows furrow in the dark. "I can order my men to discourage his training in various ways. However, I'm not so sure I can get him to do as you ask once that has happened. Not without tipping our hand, at least."

U-N-N-E-C-E-S-S-A-R-Y-P-R-E-D-E-T-E-R-M-I-N-E-D-C-O-N-T-I-N-U-E-A-S-P-L-A-N-N-E-D

"How can you be sure? If everything doesn't go off just so, then-"

A burst of tinnitus told him he was out of line. A sourceless vibration of the bones of his inner ear. A fabricated shrill noise that was not really there made by the burst of high energy waves it expelled when it was agitated. From a scientific standpoint, these were very similar to the alpha-waves Psychic-type Pokemon relied upon to affect the world around them. From a physical one it was just an earsplitting sound that was louder than a gun's report at point blank. He cringed in the dark, as all the symptoms of a migraine cropped up. He should have known better. It had known that Ash Ketchum would return to his home, well enough, so why not this?

P-R-E-D-E-T-E-R-M-I-N-E-D-C-O-N-T-I-N-U-E-A-S-P-L-A-N-N-E-D

The message repeated for his benefit, after he was able to open his eyes again.

"I _understand_," he managed, as he brought the three spiraling dots of light back into focus as a single point, trying as best he could to not sound vengeful.

L-E-A-V-E

Without a word, he felt himself out the way he had come. He'd come down to see their guest many times now and though he'd had some trouble the first few times, he had memorized his way through the inky black corridors back to the elevator. He made it there now, with minimal effort, and felt for the button that would bring him back to ground level. It did not illuminate, but he could hear the door shut behind him. The overhead light flickered on slowly, once they were underway.

There was blood on his tie.

After wiping around for its source, he tightened his features up as he inspected his fingertips. His nose had poured from both nostrils down his face and onto his collar. He hadn't noticed in the silence of the underground complex, but he came to realize that he could no longer hear the chiming sound of passing floors in his left ear, either. He dug his monogrammed kerchief from his breast pocket and tended to himself, as he contemplated a horrifying reality. When he'd ordered it brought here, it hadn't even been alive in a technical sense. Today it had tried to fry the inside of his head..

It was getting stronger.

* * *

"Oh man, can I have some of that?" Ash cried out suddenly, practically tripping over himself as she revealed the freeze-dried noodles from her pack and made toward the pot from her trail-kit that she'd situated near the fire, once she'd gotten all her dry clothes back on. She looked back at him very awkwardly and he felt himself shrink in the spot he occupied, cursing his desperate excitement.

"I... guess so." She said after a moment. She had never been all that great of a cook, to be honest, since like her sisters, she'd never been the domestic type at all. But she did know how to take care of herself, insofar as what she needed to get by. She didn't like dried noodles, really, but they were cheap, and fast, and easy, and she looked for all those qualities in meals she had to make herself, over things like flavor, nutrition, or palatability. An inkling desire to share with Ash to compensate for her earlier behavior would've prompted her to split the pot fifty-fifty, but she really hadn't planned on feeding two people on her trip. Honestly, since she'd been expecting this meeting to take place at Ash's house, she'd kindof expected a courtesy meal or two from Mrs Ketchum to round out the menu. As it was, the return trip was going to be a lot longer, and a lot more arduous than she'd planned. A trade, however, was something she was not at all against. "What've you got?"

She hoped against hope that Ash wasn't stupid enough to go off on a solo journey with no means of sustaining himself. He was very thankful that he didn't have to tell her that was the case exactly.

"Do you want some chocolate?" He offered with a lopsided, hopeful expression as he paused in the middle of lacing up his shoe, and reached out to clench a handful of the candy bars from his backpack, and displayed

The bargain was struck, and Ash plunked the brick of noodles that were now his into the pot and waited happily. Misty didn't want crappy noodles anyways, but she didn't let Ash in on the fact that she was practically robbing him at a five to one exchange rate, as she bit into the first one with a grin of her own. Instead she watched as Ash, the faithful friend that he was, look around for Pikachu, to offer him up some soup when it was done, but she'd saw Marill offer the electric mouse some Pokechow not too long ago. Shrugging, the Pallet trainer hurriedly chowed down, at the expense of burning his mouth several times, nodding his appreciation to nobody in particular.

The sounds of late afternoon settled over the forest. The call of Pidgey gave way to Kricketot chirp, and likewise the orange and purples of the setting sun gave way to the desaturated shadows cast in the light of the fire. It reminded her of being back on the road so much, that the feeling was bittersweet. She missed this. She really did.

"So what were you doing out here, earlier today?" She asked, afraid that the nostalgic moment would pass pointlessly if she did not at least try to enjoy it.

He thought about it and tried not to make a face whilst scraping noodles up his chin and into his mouth with the fork component of a swiss-army knife he'd found in one of the side pockets of his backpack. What had he been out here doing again? Yelling at Brock, sure, but, why here in particular?

"I guess I got just the smallest bit lost." He admitted finally, stuffing a huge knot of complex carbohydrates into his mouth, to deter any further conversation on the subject.

Misty popped her eyebrows a bit, gingerly pulling back on the wrapper of her candy, to expose more of it to bite off. The smallest bit lost, to Ash, was where most people drew sea-monsters, or obscuring clouds on the map. She felt a little bit comfortable in the the knowledge that at least some things never changed. "That fancy 'gear doesn't have a Pokenav function?" She asked, pointing at the device poking over the lip of his pocket.

He withdrew it and swallowed hard, setting his bowl to the side for a moment to inspect it. His Pokegear could to a lot of stuff. A lot a lot. The whole front display was clouded with apps, and a bunch of other stuff he hadn't even tried. He'd went straight for the games. The pinball one with the ball that looked like a poke ball was really fun. He'd caught almost all the Pokemon on the red table! He tried to find the function she was talking about but it was all Greek to him. He felt like if he poked at it any more with the stylus, that it'd blow up. "Uh." He held the device out in his gloved hand. "Maybe you'd better try. I almost fried a computer at the library yesterday."

She took it into her hand with an amused sneer. "What were you doing at the library?"

He lifted his eyebrows high, and turned the corners of his mouth down low. "I dunno." What in the heck _had_ he been doing at a library? He still couldn't remember hardly any of what had taken place over the past several days, and what had just come to him made no sense whatsoever. He shook his head. "_Really_ lost, I guess," he offered, just so that he wouldn't seem quite as insane as he felt, though he doubted that it did much to his credit.

Her amusement turned to incredulity just like that, and she rolled her eyes heavily at him. "I'll say." Folding her legs up beneath herself, she sat beside him and held the gear on display to show him how it worked. "Alright..."

* * *

Holiday dropped the kickstand of his new bike and chained it to the rack as he made ready to settle in for the night at the Pewter City Pokemon center. The Boss had sent official Trainer ID cards here to meet them. They would pose as two perfectly harmless, if a little old, Pokemon Trainers, he supposed. He followed Doc inside and just as had been promised, there was a package and a pre-paid room awaiting them. The room was smaller than either of them liked, but it was bigger than the cabin of a moving truck which made Doc happy and was less itchy and noisy than Viridian Forrest, which pleased him in turn.

He had it in mind to use the bathroom, since he hated the idea of going out in the woods but his 'gear went off, before he could make it. He danced a little on his feet as he thumbed through the onscreen alert.

"**Satellite Connection Detected**," it told him. The kid had finally tried to make a network uplink, and was now traceable.

"Fuckfuckfuck." Holiday told it, somewhat more urgently than it had passed on it's news. He had to go! He shoved the Pokegear into Docs hands, as he barreled toward the restroom. "I have to piss, take this!"

"What am I supposed to do with it?" Doc asked frustratedly when he finally boggled it back under his control, and turned it around in his hands. The last time Holiday had put him in this position he'd been put in charge of a live detonator.

"Just push okay and listen!" Holiday explained snappily from behind the door.

As though he could hear the sound of Doc's heavy brow arching from the bathroom, he added over the top of the sound of rushing liquid: "It's not going to _explode_, or anything. I rigged it up to listen in on the kid."

Doc shook his head wearily, and did as he was told. Over the next minute, his opinion of his current employment fell sharply. Somehow, he'd never imagined himself doing great things when he was out of school, or anything, but he'd always imagined that he'd be just a little bit higher up the occupational ladder than the guy who made a living listening to two teenagers go at it like Shinx.

"...See, it works like this. And if you don't hit it dead on the first time, see how you can kinda slide it up and down, until you find it?"

"Oh, _yeah_. That's awesome! You're pretty good at this sorta thing!"

"Well, I mean, I've done it a _lot_."

"Really? So you have a hard time doing it on your own too, huh?"

"Well, I mean, I only do it when I absolutely _have_ to."

"Which is probably all the time! I know you! You were always blaming me but, I know_ you _were just as bad!"

"Just shut up and focus, Ash."

"Alright, so, its just this little button right here at the top?"

"Mm-hm."

"And then just..."

"That's it."

"And then you..."

"See, you're starting to get it."

"Alright, so now what? I forget."

"Well, you found the right spot. All you need to know now, is where you're going from here."

"Yeah, I got that, but I forget how to do it."

"Well, why don't you just try poking around a little, and see if you can find it without me helping you."

"Is this it?"

"No."

"...What about this?"

"Try again."

"Ah!"

"Ouch! Hey, will you be more careful! Don't just go stabbing around wildly, or you really _will_ break it!"

"Sorry. It slipped out of my hand. It's hard to grip little stuff with these gloves on."

"Well, I understand it's _tiny_, just keep a better grip on it. You hit me in the eye!"

"Okay, okay, sorry! Jeeze."

"Alright. You were on the the right track there with that last one."

"Okay, so then...all I have to do is..."

"Yep. Just punch it in right there, and you're good to go."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"I thought it would be harder than that."

Feeling miserable and quite disgusted, Doc was even less pleased when Holiday, having evidently overheard, stepped out of the bathroom with a huge sneer on his face. "That's what _she_ said."

* * *

A/N: _"Yes, fuck, we get it. They were really just using Ash's gear, It was innuendo, we understand, Dynasty, Christ! Did you have to beat the dead horse for that long?"_

Yes.

Until next time.


	7. Chapter VII

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Misty leaves behind a surprise for Ash before returning home, which our hero is forced to struggle with as he takes on the first big challenge of his journey: The Boulder Badge!

A/N: A lot of small things got in the way of this chapter. Nothing really worth mentioning. Um, I think this will break the 100k word mark for the fic, which is cool, I guess. Anyways, this story needs more battles! Let's get to it.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter VII**

"He Conquers Who Endures"

"So," Holiday paused to indulge himself in another murmured giggle as he pedaled easily in the early sunlight, slumped forward onto the handlebar. "Do you think that was the girl who ran into us?"

They were making their way out of Pewter City across Route 3 in order to put some breathing room in between themselves and their mark.

Doc shuddered, as he jogged alongside his partner. "I don't know and I don't care to comment."

"So I figure that means they must know each other." He said loftily, lifting a fresh burger to his mouth, and scarfing down a few bites, entirely neutral about the fact that it didn't taste all that different from an aged one. It's packaging denoted that it was a Hyper Happy Burger, rather than it's generic white-wrapper counterpart the day previous. To Holiday, it meant that they were getting back toward civilization. "I mean, aside from the fact the kid said so, what kinda girl that age teaches a random stranger she just met how to handle his equi-"

"_I don't know and I don't care to comment_." Doc answered, evenly overlapping his partner, though the volume of his voice did increase somewhat.

"Alright, alright." Holiday acquiesced, nursing another chuckle. "I'm willing to admit, it wasn't one of my better ideas from a posterity standpoint." He shrugged, and polished off the burger, with little fervor. "But, it does work."

"If the intention was to put me off solid, food, sure." Doc groaned. It was a lie of course, he'd had a fast-food salad, and taken no small amount of ridicule for it, from Holiday. "That's three minutes of my life I wish I could have back."

"Three minutes!" Holiday gave a yelp of laughter, elbowing his friend, who arched a brow. "It only lasted three minutes!"

"What's so funny about that?"

Holiday opened his mouth to explain, but then closed it, and dug into the paper sack balanced on his lap with an angry, sobered expression. "Nothing."

The taller Admin withdrew another burger, peeled away the wrapper, and tossed it and the bag away carelessly. "If it makes you feel better, I didn't tell the boss anything about it, yet. So, at least there's no chance of that happening again on purpose."

"That's good." Doc agreed, pointing toward a huge swell in the ridge-line. "There's Mt. Moon, up ahead, Bro."

He was going to have to take Doc's word for it at this point. Holiday couldn't see too clearly at all without his glasses. He'd had to practically stick a hamburger in his eye earlier to scrutinize it, since he thought he'd tasted pickles, which he hated. Even his partner's face was a flesh-colored smear with thick bushy eyebrows, to him. "You know," He mentioned, swerving easily to avoid a large rock. "I always heard people say that mountain-biking was hard, but this isn't really all that tough."

"You'd have to put down the cheeseburger and take it out of 27th gear, to get any real exercise." Doc shot back, holding in a snicker.

Holiday only scoffed, though. "Yeah right. I'm supposed to get all sweaty like you, too, I guess."

"It couldn't hurt."

"No thanks. I'd prefer it if only one of us smelled like a Muk's ass."

"I can take a shower. It's gonna be tough to wash off that double-chin you got creepin' up, bro."

Holiday paused mid-chew, to regard his partner. "...I'm sorry, did you say something?" Holding the half a burger equidistantly between them, he flopped it a bit for effect, dripping mayo into the dirt. "I couldn't hear you over how delicious this is."

Just as the duo was leaving sight of Pewter City, the youngest Waterflower was entering it's limits off of Route 2.

She had left Ash's company last night with a lot of ground to make up, and vengeance on her mind. She clasped the only evidence of her missing bike in her right hand, two halves of a broken pair of gaudy horned-rimmed glasses, now with much less fervor than she had many hours ago. She hadn't had a chance to get good and ramped up about her bike being missing with the other matters that had been at hand yesterday, and so she'd spent nearly the entire trip here having random outbursts of stamping and screaming, none of which was doing Marill any real good, as she jostled her backpack around unintentionally in her anger. Instead, she spiked both halves of the glasses against the pavement, and came down on both of them with one authoritative high-top, twisting it viciously for her own benefit.

That bike represented a significant financial investment to her, not to mention the personal value it had, aside from that. She'd sunk a lot into that bike, and now, as near as she could tell, there was someone out joyriding it as they pleased. Not to mention the fact that because it had become a signature series bike, it wasn't as though she could just flip out on the next person she saw with one. There were at least one hundred bikes of the same specification out there, and though they weren't all pink like hers was, there were still more than a handful that were. The only way she'd really know would be by her bike-lock, which was hers specifically, and she'd look pretty suspicious poking her nose around so close to what might end up being someone else's bike. Other than that small detail, hers was just the first of many like it, and there was really no other way to tell. Her bike, the bike that had started one of the biggest and most influential parts of her life, had been taken from her and this time it was very unlikely that she would ever see it again.

She was tired and upset, she knew, and it wasn't going to to her any good to keep on raging around town trying to find something that was probably long gone, but that didn't make it suck any less. She let go of a breath and tried to relinquish of some of her anger. The absolute worst part about it was that if her sisters found out, they were never going to let her live this one down. They were always getting on her case about every little slip up that happened, even when they were statistically no better than her at being responsible, just because she was the youngest.

_"We put a lot of faith in you, to lead this Gym, Misty."_ Daisy would say, because she was the oldest, and therefore technically also the stand-in mom, who was by definition above reproach in every way, it seemed. And that was how it would start. But it wouldn't end there,_ oh no_.

_"Yeah, Misty."_

_"Yeah, Misty, seriously."_ Violet and Lilly would say, in their typical tag-team format from either side of their elder sibling. Though the middle siblings usually stood opposed from Daisy, part of their own familial faction, they would always act as her head-hunting yes-men when the opportunity presented itself.

_"But if you can't look after you own things any better than that, how can we possibly trust you to look after something like this?"_ Daisy would ask angrily, in that special way only someone as super-model graceful as she was could. When Misty got angry, her face splotched and her mouth creased up, and her eyes got red. When Daisy got angry, it was like every feature of her face shifted just minutely enough to allow her thin eyebrows to come down at an angle and her lips to thin without line or wrinkle one. And she didn't even yell when she was mad. Not that she couldn't, mind you: It took real pipes to settle dispute in the Waterflower household, and she always had the final word. But you could really tell she was angry, when you could barely hear her.

She resisted the urge to hang her head in shame at her own imaginary dressing-down. Instead she shook it, remembering all the times where they'd been just as irresponsible. Hypocrisy was a pretty powerful equalizer, in her mind. If they tried to come down on her for getting her bike stolen, she would just remind them all of why she was there in the first place: none of them could win an honest-to-goodness battle to save their lives.

She didn't really want to do this, but the thought of getting home two days late to find that her sisters had left a large box of badges outside of the gym doors with a sign saying "Take two, they're small." steeled her resolve. She took out her phone and thumbed through her contact list, noting that she still needed to call Brock, before putting in up to her face. She betrayed a yawn as rang. A cheerful voice picked up from the other end.

"Hey baby sis. What's up?" Daisy asked.

Misty looked around for moment trying to thing of what she wanted to say, and how exactly she intended to say it. Eventually, she decided it would be best if she just asked. "I need a ride." She said with a moan of displeasure.

It turned out to be just that easy, which was something of a miracle to her, but she supposed it probably had something to do with the fact that coming to help her meant that Daisy could leave the gym. Misty wasn't positive if this would be to the tune of the Gym closing it's doors for the remainder of the day, or her eldest sister owing Violet and Lily a favor, but she figured that either way it went, there wasn't going to be anything productive getting done, so it hardly mattered. Daisy wanted to do some shopping nearby as compensation, but that was no big deal to her; She wasn't particularly thrilled at the prospect of walking everywhere she went, unlike Ash. She'd gotten over that pretty soon after she'd gotten her bike back.

Dropping the Pokegear from her ear, she decided she would spend the next few hours incognito, hoping desperately that she would not bump into Ash as he made his way into town. Though it was doubtful that he'd even be awake at this hour, She'd said her goodbyes and hoped those would remain final until they met again on her terms. There had been enough awkwardness.

But first things first, she had to resolve this matter once and for all. She flicked her 'gear over to Brock's contact listing. As it rang, she thought back on what Ash had said to her the night before, just before he'd laid down on his sleeping-bag and kicked off his shoes to go to bed.

"I'm not going back," he had explained, looking towards his ankles and shaking his head very softly. "But it's not because I don't want to be with them. It's not even because I want to be left alone. I hate being alone." He'd smiled a little and plucked at the fabric of his bedroll. "I'm doing this, because I know that if I don't, I'm always going to regret it."

"Why?" She had asked, shaking her head, unable to understand. She though she ought to give it one last try for Brock's sake, if nothing else. "Why do you have to?"

He had just looked up at her and angled his head to the side. "The same reason you had to."

It wasn't the obligation he had been talking about. It was the dream. She hadn't realized it at the time, but returning to the Gym had been the window of opportunity for her and she'd have squandered it by staying with Ash, no matter how much she might've wanted to. It was only Ash, out of everyone, who seemed to have known it at the time. Even though it still hadn't banked out for her just yet, she certainly had a much better chance of making it as a Water Pokemon Master in her position than she did almost anywhere else, and she'd grown more as a trainer by having to face challengers there, as opposed to taking what she could get following Ash around. Whether or not this opportunity would present the same to Ash was anyone's guess, but if that was how he felt about it, she certainly didn't have the track-record here to tell him he was wrong. This was about proving it to himself. This was about becoming who he wanted to be.

Still, it felt so strange to see Ash that way. So thoughtful, so... tempered. It still smacked of the cock-sure and head-strong Ash she had always known, of course, but the way he'd made up his mind about it was no longer the wanton decision making of a small boy who was throwing fate to the wind and doing as he pleased. Ash was a young man now and he was taking up the reigns of his life, just the same way she had. She could certainly respect that. She still didn't like the idea, and she would still tell him so, but she figured it was time to let it drop for good.

Still, agreeing to this was just another instance, the third in fact, of willfully walking out of her best friend's life, it seemed. The first time had been the hardest. She'd shared so much with the boys, and it was all so fresh on her mind then, that leaving him and Brock behind had been truly torturous and for a long stretch she had truly despised her sisters for pinning her with the obligation. Things had changed in time and she'd come to love it- come to look upon her time spent traveling fondly, rather than ruefully, and her new charge as a blessing, rather than a curse. For a long time, she'd put the whole thing towards the back of her mind, and tried to concentrate just on training, and her life with her sisters, as well as at the gym. She supposed that was why the second time, even though it had been only been for a short while when Ash and his friends had come back to make his Battle Frontier rounds, had been a such a sharp reminder of all that she'd missed out on. She'd really missed having someone her own age around, mostly, but she'd also missed the adventure, and excitement of traveling. And she'd also missed him, in spite of herself. She'd toughed it out then, of course, just as she'd tough it out now, but how long would it be before she saw him again? Would she still matter when she did, or would she just fade further into irrelevancy to him?

Well, she decided, that was all up to Ash. She'd played her hand and then some, in this situation. She might not have been a Sensational Sister, with all their feminine wiles, but she did have her ways. Only time would tell.

Still, the thought did upset her a little. She cursed under her breath at how stupid she felt for having to drag the knuckle of the fingerless gloves which were soon to become part of her permanent apparel, across her cheek to clear away a bit of moisture that leaked out of her eyes in spite of her clenched jaw. She she knew good and well Brock and Dawn would have far more cause to be upset than she did, but she couldn't help herself. Her roller-coaster emotions just swept her along as they pleased.

"Hey Misty." Brock answered. "How did it go?"

"I-" she let out a little cough of sobriety and fanned at her face rapidly while she paced the sidewalk. "I couldn't change his mind."

* * *

Tracey looked up at the clock. It was 10:15 AM. They'd been working solid for two hours now and he decided it was time for a little break. He set his pen down and stretched his arms high above his head, before reclining a bit in his seat. The sound of rapid note-taking caused him to turn slightly. Gary, who was still penciling furiously into a large legal-style tablet, sat hunched over his table to the rear of the room.

It had been almost three weeks now, and Tracey was still unsure why Gary was here. He was undoubtedly brilliant and he had a curious mind that was always looking to understand the most obscured issues of his field, but would the the grandson of the Pokemon Professor be content with the type of research they conducted here? Professor Oak worked with behavioral research, which Tracey found rather exciting, but he imagined that the change would probably bother Gary. After all, he'd lived on the Ranch with the Professor his whole life, and had not chosen at his field of research, favoring Paleontology, instead. He could understand that. While some men of science were content to make their contribution wherever they could, the typical trainer wouldn't settle for anything but constant excitement and adventure. Gary's field of choice had made a lot of sense, when he'd heard about it. Researching fossils in the field was a lot more exciting than observational research. Just what you would've expected from a hotshot Pokemon trainer. Of course, Gary claimed to have left that all behind- along with it's typical modus operandi, it seemed.

Still, this visit, as far as Tracey knew, had come at the end of a tense videophone conversation with the professor and other than that, he knew very little of the nature of Gary's sudden leave of absence from his research on Sayda Island. Still, as strange as his presence might have seemed, having him here was pretty nice since it did free him up to do more of what he truly enjoyed doing, that being Observational Research, while Gary assisted the professor in other regards. Tracey certainly wasn't skeptical of the young man's ability. "Was there much headway in your research, before you decided to come home?" Tracey asked, conversationally, turning slightly at his desk to regard the young scientist.

Gary looked up from a microscope, where he'd been inspecting a piece of thunderstone to round out a small supplementary report he was doing for one of his Grandfather's latest quarterly papers and blinked at the watcher, jotting down what he'd seen on a nearby tablet before collecting his thoughts in order to speak. "As much as I could've hoped for, really. I made some pretty interesting discoveries on Sayda Island." He said at last, with a tinge of regret in his voice, the source of which Tracey could only guess at.

"I'm assuming you continued your work with fossils?" Tracey guessed. "You work with the Aerodactyl last summer was quite impressive."

"Yep." Gary said with a simple nod in a acknowledgment of the older researcher's compliment. "That whole island is completely covered in fossil specimens. It was a really great location for my research."

Tracey jutted out his lip. "Well," He began, clearing his throat a little, as he considered how best to continue. He was quite curious to know, actually. "What happened, if you don't mind me asking?"

Gary reclined in his chair, with a dissatisfied groan. "The corporate benefactor for the Sayda Island Research Lab- some big foreign enterprise company in Orre, cut funding to our program," he explained, tossing his hand idly from side to side, as though he was trying not to care too much either way. "Said we weren't producing enough empirical data. That we couldn't really use the research we had been doing to prove anything, so it was all next to useless- You remember the guy they interviewed after Ash's last prelim match?" Tracey nodded, wide eyed. "Last I heard, he was supposed to take over for them, and direct the research in a more 'practical' direction." The young Oak rolled his eyes, air-quoting himself.

Tracey's mouth gaped. "Oh my... Dora must've been devastated!"

"Yea." Gary said gloomily, as though he'd just remembered that part. "Her and her sister were pretty upset." He raised a nitrile gloved hand to his face, and gently rubbed a spot over his eyebrow. "I don't think anyone was really happy to hear the news that we'd lost the research contract." He sighed, and then did his best to shrug it off, making a slapping motion over his shoulder. "You know, I think was the worst part was when they showed up to confiscate all our research materials, though." He gave a halfhearted smile, which Tracey tried to turn helpfully. "Sometimes you get so involved in what you're working on, you forget that it actually belongs to someone else. Data, notes, specimens, everything. Bought and paid for."

Tracey blinked helplessly, having had no idea the conversation would take such a nasty turn south. He could see why Gary had decided to come home. He'd have never guessed the private sector was so rough! "What, uh..." He stopped, trying desperately to think of a way to recover. "What exactly had you been working on?"

Gary smiled. "Well, I don't have any of the keynote data, obviously, but I'd been working on making what could've panned out to be some pretty serious advancements in our understanding of Paleovirology. Particularly with how it relates to Pokemon Evolution."

Intrigued and also relieved, Tracey leaned forward over the leathered cover of his logbook which sat on the table before him. "Interesting." He rolled his hand slightly, inviting Gary to continue.

"Well, assuming that you have a basic understanding of how a virus infects it's host, we are able to find evidence of ancient viral strains, by looking at small snippets of a fossilized organism's DNA, that might otherwise seem innocuous, but are actually the remnants of a virus' DNA left behind after an infection during the organism's lifespan. Since viruses essentially hijack our own cells to replicate themselves innumerably, eventually that DNA gets copied enough that its original source is forgotten and the body just accepts it as it's own, altering the whole ever so slightly. Since the parts and pieces are very very small, there's no real effect from generation to generation; the noticeable changes have to be observed over millions of years which makes the phenomenon itself particularly hard to study- not to mention that the amount of usable fossilized DNA is pretty scarce, even on Sayda Island. Its not as though there are any little fossilized viral proteins imbedded in limestone, to go study."

Tracey chuckled at the idea. "No, I suppose not."

"Well, the research I was doing before we lost the contract concerned how this may have affected Pokemon. Some scientists suspect that as much as eight percent of the human genome is actually paleovirus remnants. I believe my findings may have been indicating that Pokemon DNA is even more-so comprised of viral material. Maybe even as much a forty percent. The most recent specimen we had recovered before our funding was cut was very interesting, in that its genetic sequence was almost entirely comprised of viral DNA! I don't think I really have to tell you how huge that could have been."

He didn't. Tracey leaned back and whistled. "Well," he offered in condolence. "I don't think it ever hurt to have another Oak around. I'm sure your grandpa appreciates your help with his behavioral research, and I know I appreciate being able to devote more time to Pokemon Watching. The lab work feels kindof bland to me, by comparison."

Gary smiled, but waved him off with a cool demeanor. "Look close enough at anything and you can find beauty," He offered, proverbially. "Like, say, the crystal matrix of this thunderstone." He adjusted the viewing aperture a bit, and invited Tracey to look into his microscope.

Tracey thought he sounded a lot like his grandfather waxing poetical, as he stooped to look at the fractal crystalline formation beneath the scope. It was very pretty, though.

* * *

Brock stood back in surprise, trying to tear himself out of the situation. He wondered how in the world things had gotten so out of hand. The entire front room had become a war-zone, it seemed. A drink on the coffee-table had been upset and the throws and pillows from nearly ever article of furniture had been displaced onto the floor. Brock had been forced, twice now, to leap into Dawn's wake and right the reading lamp before it teetered off of the end-table. Dawn had even gotten a few of her Pokemon involved, and while their little chase had come to a stalemate for the time-being, presently, she was screaming into his phone.

"Look, I understand that." Misty's voice groaned over the line and into Dawn's ear, while it could get a word in edgewise. She had been trying to explain herself for almost an hour now, and had made very little progress in accomplishing the task.

"No!" Dawn, feeling similarly, shook her head, causing blue hair that had gone unbrushed today in her anxiety to come cascading down into her face. Why couldn't anyone understand? "You don't!" She paused only briefly to brush it aside, doubling her volume. "Why would he just decide he had to? If you understand, then tell me that!"

Brock had tried very gently to get his phone back twice now, and twice Dawn had just wrenched away from him angrily, and continued to holler at the Cerulean gym-leader. He reached for it again, only to have her raise her elbow up and deflect him.

"Dawn," Misty said tiredly, threateningly. "Put Brock back on the phone." Her patience, truthfully, had been wearing thin for quite some time, and she knew that her own boiling point was fast approaching. She wanted to believe that she was just a little above getting into it over the phone with an eleven year-old, but she was really starting to question just how much more of this she was willing to subject herself to.

"Not until you answer my question!"

"Dawn, please let me have the pho-"

"Answer me!"

"Dawn-"

"Brock said that you would know what to say! He said that you would know what to do!"

"WELL I DIDN'T, OKAY?" The speaker exploded into her ear. A continent away, Misty was ducking under Ash's League Expo hat to avoid the attention of passers by at her sudden outburst, while the young coordinator flinched away wildly from the Pokegear with a ringing ear. Brock took his opening and slipped the gear out of her grip, taking one wide and precautionary step away. It proved to be unnecessary, as she turned and sprinted up the stairs, scooping Piplup into her arms mid stride and ducking speedily under Johanna's arm as she passed her mother. Brock could only grimace apologetically at Johanna, who regarded him quizzically, as she turned to follow her daughters progress up the flight, having finally resorted to ending her morning class early to find out what the cause of all the yelling was.

Brock put a hand over the receiver. "Ah, I'm really sorry," he said in embarrassment. Johanna just tilted her head a little and gave a sad, lopsided smile as though she'd been about ready to say the same thing and turned to make her way back up the flight of stairs. Brock hung his head, feeling very self-conscious about what had just happened, and what a mess it had just turned into.

"Hey, It's me," he said, as he put the phone back to his ear to hear Misty's angry huffing. "Sorry. She just sorta snatched the phone away from me, there. She's on a real tear."

Misty felt pretty thread-bare on the opposite end, but cleared her throat. "It's okay, I know the type," she muttered. She was above getting into it with an eleven year-old. What she wasn't above, however, was talking poorly about one. "Coordinators think the world owes them everything."

Brock sucked in a breath between his teeth at the rebuke for his friend.. "Try not to judge her too harshly, Misty."

Misty felt her eyes widen sharply, pushing up the brim of her cap. Why in the hell shouldn't she? It wasn't like this was super easy for her, or anything! She grasped the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index and worked at it in an effort to soothe her temper. Why did she suddenly appreciate the fact that at least she could yell at her sisters in person, when the desire arose? She tried to work up a good counter to that to express just such an opinion, but she was too tired, and too grumpy to bother. "Whatever."

"C'mon, surely you remember how upset you were when you had to leave?" Brock tutted.

She exhaled the contents of her lungs in one gasp, a little bit miffed that he had such a valid point. She guessed she could see it from her perspective, even if she was essentially behaving just like a girl version of a certain stubborn-ass trainer she'd always butted heads with. "Fine, fine." She took a deep breath to replenish herself and let her free hand fall back to her side.

"So tell me." Brock began, with an inhale of his own. "How is he? Really," the breeder asked, oh so like the older brother he'd always been to them.

Misty shook her head and swapped her Pokegear over to her other ear. "As far as I can tell, it seems like he's doing okay. But you know how he is."

Brock sighed. "Yeah."

She made a smacking noise on the inside of her cheek, and bobbed her head in unspoken affirmation. "Look, I'm really sorry," she began, "But I'm not gonna try and get in his way. He's made up his mind."

"I understand. I owe you one either way," Brock acknowledged quietly. "In hindsight, it was probably in poor taste for me to ask in the first place."

She was actually pretty thankful that she'd had an opportunity to come and see Ash, but there wasn't a chance in hell she was going to outright acknowledge it, so she just played along. "That's what friends are for, I guess."

A black SUV slowing to a stop on the curb in front of her, she drew the conversation to a close. "Hey look, I gotta get off here. Tell _princess_ I'm sorry for yelling at her, alright?"

Brock, having a mess to clean up and explaining to do, likewise said his goodbyes.

Daisy lowered the tinted window on the passenger side, just as she was clapping her 'gear shut against the shoulder of her jacket.

"That tacky-looking jacket again, Misty, come on," Daisy complained. "I told you that was just a joke. You don't have to keep wearing it."

Misty stuck out her tongue, and pulled on the door handle, letting herself into the stately all-leather beige interior of Daisy's roomy vehicle. When her eldest sister caught sight of her full attire, she let lose with the standard "What did you do, dress yourself in the dark?" which she found herself mouthing in time silently, as well was mocking with the opening and closing of her hand on the opposite side of her body, so that Daisy couldn't see her doing it. She didn't dignify it with a reply other than to roll her eyes. Part of her liked the fact that she drove her sisters crazy with her purported anti-fashion.

"And where did you get that ugly hat?"

"Someone gave it to me." She shot back venomously.

"Aren't you supposed to _give _to the homeless?"

"Ugh" She groaned. "Just drive, Daisy."

Her elder sister moved to put down the parking brake, but then stopped. "What about your bike? Don't you need to throw it in the rack?"

_Dammit_, she thought, letting the back of her skull collide with the head-rest. _Why can't even one thing go right?_ She considered it for a moment, and decided that she didn't need to hear a lecture right now. "I lent it out."

Daisy gave her a look, and for a minute she thought that her older sister was seriously about to bust her, but then, confusingly, she winked and said, "Oh, I get it."

Misty remained silent for a long time, as her sister put the SUV into drive and pulled away, letting her go through quite a few stop lights, before her curiosity got the better of her, and she angrily rounded on her sister. "Get what?"

"Oh," Daisy said with a giggle, shifting ever so slightly in her smart-looking gray overcoat, having evidently forgotten having said anything at all, for a moment. "Just that you're totally sprung for that kid."

"What?" Misty shrieked suddenly, sputtering to come up with a rebuke. "Bypassing the fact that you're completely wrong and also insane; how did you even know I was going going to see Ash?" She supposed that by proxy this was an admittance that she had actually gone to go see him, which was now inescapable, but she'd remained quite tight-lipped on the subject even before leaving Cerulean! How could she have possibly have known? She ripped the hat off her head and stuffed it between herself and the arm-rest so as to hide any further incriminating evidence.

Daisy just laughed at her and held up her thumb, taking a physical count of one. "He didn't do so hot in the Sinnoh League, right? I saw you watching it on the news the other day, so don't bother denying it."

Misty pulled her lips to the side in preparation to yell, but Daisy cut her off, raising another finger off her ten and two grip on the steering wheel. "Then you coincidentally beg me and your sisters to lead the Gym while you 'take care of something' out of town for a few days."

"You might've been able to sneak that one past Violet and Lily, but not me." She raised another finger off the wheel, bringing the total count to three. "Then, to top it all off, you've got a blush like the backside of a chimney going on over there."

Misty crossed her arms, and slumped in her seat, scowling furiously at what was being implied.

"Don't pout, Misty, you'll give yourself worry-lines."

"Shut up."

"Why?" Daisy gasped, pretending to be taken aback. "I think it's sweet you lent your boyfriend your bike so he wouldn't have to-

"He's** not**," the younger Waterflower began in a low snarl, "my boyfriend!"

Daisy just laughed again though, and Misty slapped a hand over her face, dragging it wearily across her features. Resignedly, the youngest Waterflower took out her gear and checked the time. This was going to be one_ loooong_ car-ride. Trying to push her thoughts somewhere other than the inside of this car, trapped as she was, with her big-mouthed sister, she wondered what her friend was up to. Ash ought to have been waking up about now, she guessed. With a smirk, she wondered how he was going to take her goodbye letter.

* * *

Ash read the note out loud to Pikachu, letting his partner hold the poke ball that had accompanied it. His powers of oration rather limited, by both the fatigue of just waking up, and a general lack of reading prowess, he did not read the letter with nearly the emphasis or tone that had been put into writing it. His delivery way choppy and a bit deadpan.

"Hey, Ketchum. I gotta get back to the Gym, so sorry I couldn't stick around to say goodbye. You'll come and see me, right? Something tells me you will... Since I have one of your Pokemon now. Ha-ha. Guess what? We traded and you didn't even know it. Kingler will make a nice addition to my team, I think. I promise he'll be more than fighting fit when you need him again. Maybe even the strongest Pokemon you'll ever have. Except Pikachu, if he's reading this. If not, then totally." Ash realized after he'd read that part, that he probably shouldn't have, but Pikachu either found it inoffensive, or incomprehensible, so he read on, his voice now somewhat more concerned, and speed elevated by the surprise of what he was slowly beginning to digest.

"Anyways, I think I'll keep Kingler around until tournament time, just to make sure he really gets in some quality training. You're welcome to come visit him any time you want, but don't think I'm going to do all the work here. I expect you to take excellent care of my Gyrados, understand? Signed, your best friend, Misty. PS: Seriously, Ketchum. Take good care of my Pokemon, or I'll break your legs the next time I see you. PPS: Oh, and that's two bikes you owe me now." he finished, slapping the crumpled up the letter and slapped the letter against his pant leg.

"Can you believe this crap?" He held up the now crinkled piece of paper, and waved it back and forth angrily. "First she comes out here and runs her big mouth, and now she's stealing my Pokemon," he yelped, bypassing completely that he was now apparently on the accused list in the case of Misty's missing bike. "She's just like-" he crushed the piece of paper in his hand, and smashed his eyes together furiously. "Just like..."

There was a flash of recollection that bounced off the inside of his head, and his eyes popped open as he gave a dull snap of his fingers.

"Like Team Rocket!" he snarled finally, drawing a likewise irritated expression from his partner at the mention of the name and feeling very fortunate that he'd not seen his normally ever-present nemeses since they'd brought him home, lest he have another irritation to contend with. "But even MORE annoying!"

"Kachu?" His partner inquired, holding the poke ball up for his inspection. Instead, Ash put the balled fist that contained the note harshly into the dirt and used it to stand, before taking the poke ball and attaching it to his belt, without opening it.

"_No way_. We're taking it back," Ash said with confidence.

"Pikachupi pika?" Pikachu implored.

"Yeah right." Ash snorted. "Nobody asked to _trade_! She just wants to make me look like an idiot!"

"Pi kaa," the yellow mouse sighed in defeat. Ash offered no further comment on the matter.

After gathering up his gear, and pouring water over the last ash-covered cinders of his nearly spent campfire, Ash spent the next few hours, much like his cerulean counterpart, raging and storming into Pewter. Though his reasons were different, the sentiment was no less fierce. Ash was a Pokemon lover, through and through, and he had no intention of bearing any ill will toward Misty's Gyrados. That said, he was not, and never really had been a proponent of Pokemon Trading, having always developed deep relationships with all of his Pokemon. To him the idea was almost heinous, and he would no more trade a Pokemon for another, than he would trade away a good friend, for someone else's. His first trade he'd made, he'd felt very pressured into and had demanded almost immediately to trade back because of how miserable he'd felt afterward. The only reason he'd dared to trade Aipom was because the Pokemon had seemed so enticed by the idea of Coordinating, and Buizel had taken such a liking to his way of doing things that there had seemed almost no other choice. He was going to get his Kingler back from Misty one away or another and he wasn't going to train her Gyrados, either. There were certain things a man just couldn't allow, he decided with another angry stomp of his foot.

Pikachu thought the display was a little overdone, honestly, flattening his ears out and shaking his head as he walked beside his trainer. As the forest gave way to paved footpath, however, and the structures of Pewter City structures cropped up before them, the Electric-type watched Ash change gears in a flash.

Ash had a job to do here, and he was very familiar with it. The problems he'd been mulling over and over all morning didn't seem capable of following him out of the forest, to this place. His thoughts of the previous afternoon seemed free once more, to do their work, and he resolved very quickly to put them to work. A trainer on the mend needed a battle of course! And here, as opposed to his earlier trip off the beaten path, there were some to be had. He took out his gear and spun his fingertip around wildly as he looked for the Trainer's Eyes App on his 'gear amongst the cloud of colored icons. Misty had showed him where it was earlier. At last he found the stylized symbol, a single blue eye, it's pupil represented by a open circle and central dot that was the universal symbol for a poke ball He prodded it gingerly with his finger, forgoing the stylus entirely.

The exhaustive list of trainers available for a match-up came up immediately, each represented by trainer ID and badges collected, as well as the ones that were recommended by the app itself as battlers that might make good opponents. He found himself wondering immediately how he'd gotten along without this thing before now. There were close to thirty trainers in and around Pewter right now, and almost all of them were flagged as available, with a tiny button next to their name if he decided to use the tie-in Match Call application. He flicked his finger across the display and scanned down the list, as it whizzed past.

He bit the inside of his cheek when it turned out that most of the trainers on the list were rookies, with only just a few of them actually holding badges, some of them with only just a few matches under their belt at all. Ash was no elitist, certainly a tough opponent was a tough opponent no matter how you sliced it, as his Sinnoh League loss had so disappointingly taught him, but he would've felt like he was picking on some of these trainers, if he battled them. He raised his eyebrows sympathetically when he saw that one of the trainers on the bottom of the list had ten consecutive losses, with no wins. As hungry as he was for a win, he didn't want to be anybody's eleventh.

He closed the app and slid his Pokegear back into his front right pocket. No, he decided. If he was going to have a battle, it was going to be one he could really go all-out on. He wanted to fight with the same intensity he'd been fighting at before he'd lost in Sinnoh, and didn't want to have to battle someone who didn't have the experience needed to compete with him on that same level. Though honestly, more than anything, he didn't want to face the possibility of losing to someone with far less experience than him twice in a row. He wasn't sure his ego could take that. He laughed at himself morosely.

Which really, left one option. He would just have to take the fight straight to the Pewter City gym. It meant no warm-up before the real thing, but he was going to have to get back to his old self sooner or later, so it may as well be sooner, he thought.

His feet were already carrying him there, as he considered trading out his current Pokemon for his Sinnoh team. They were fresher, and more geared towards his current style of battle, being that it's composition hadn't changed much over the past year, barring only two or three swaps. But he decided that if he couldn't win with his oldest and most experienced line-up, that he was not much of a trainer at all.

He made his way to Pewter gym, which took him an Pikachu the better part of an hour, since Ash refused to use his 'gear, hoping to avoid becoming too dependent on it. He found the vaulted structure just the way he'd always remembered it; a wide open, stone building with no lobby and only very sparsely decorated with the title of the gymnasium engraved right into the side, rather than on any sort of sign. The inside was likewise unchanged, he noted, opening the door (careful this time to read the four-letter word printed on the handle) for Pikachu and himself. Pewter Gym's interior was just a single, massive open chamber, with intense but sparse overhead lighting.

"Hello?" He called into the dim chamber, as the door swung shut behind him.

Ash could see a thick knot of people towards the center of the room, perk at the sound of his voice, and then suddenly charge him. Their footfalls were so numerous, that he and Pikachu took one nervous step backward as the human stampede closed in on them.

He spotted Forrest, Brock's eldest brother, whom Ash knew was leading the Gym now at the head of the pack, but amongst the ball of tangled arms, legs and exuberant screaming formed by all of the Pewter Gym-leader's brothers and sisters, no other figure was immediately discernible to him. Though, he imagined that Brock could probably pick them out by the timbre of their voices, and the dirt under their fingernails, at fifty paces if need be.

He felt a little embarrassed when they all gathered around him, expectantly eying the door behind him and he was compelled by his own curiosity to turn and watch with them for several moments, before asking what they were waiting on.

One of the younger siblings, who Ash thought might've been named Timmy, but wasn't sure whined "Aw, is it just you?"

Another, who he wouldn't even have guessed was Suzie, groaned. "Brock's not here? Gyp!" The two youngest, whom he remembered by rhyme-scheme if nothing else, as Billy and Tilly likewise voiced their dissatisfaction.

Timmy and Suzie were both knocked on the head by an older sibling, whom Ash would've assumed was Yolanda, but was actually, Cindy.

The three oldest under Forrest; Salvadore, the girl who was actually Yolanda, and Tommy, leered down over Cindy's shoulders at the youngest four, and rebuked them. "That's rude, you guys." Cindy noted, while Forrest just rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Sor-ry" the four youngest said in chorus.

The realization that they'd been waiting on their oldest brother to come through the door made him feel awkward. He wasn't really sure if he should accept their apology or apologize himself. He waved his hands in front of himself, and went to explain, but Forrest cut him off, extending an open palm.

"It's nice to see you again, Ash."

Ash let his lips part, for a moment, as he aimed himself back towards the throng of siblings and held his own out, trying to think of something adequate to say. It proved uneccessary, as Forrest slapped his hand against Ash's own, and gripped it snugly. Ash had to brace himself a bit, when the young gym-leader shook it, wagging it a great distance up and down. Ash couldn't help but smile in spite of how jarring it was.

Forrest reminded him a lot of Brock in the way he was so friendly and it was very easy thereafter, to slip into conversation with the Pewter trainer and his siblings. Forrest talked about some of the battles he'd had recently, with his brothers and sisters chimed in when it was appropriate as if to provide confirmation, and though Ash did not particularly want to talk about his recent battles, he was able to easily recall similar circumstances to the ones Forrest was describing, from his journeys.

The conversation eventually worked its way back to his more recent exploits though, and he prepared an explanation for what exactly had led to him being here, but that too proved unneeded. Instead they just clouded tighter around him and talked more, while he slowly broke into a bashful smile.

"We watched you on TV! We were rooting for you!"

"I'm sure you'll kick everybody's butt next year!"

"You're still our favorite battler, Ash!"

"-Besides our bro, of course!"

"Well, yeah, of course!"

"But you've been so many different places. That's so cool!"

"I bet nobody in Kanto's seen as many Pokemon as you, Ash!"

"What about Professor Oak?"

"-Well, except for him, maybe."

"I like Ash's Torterra the best!"

"No way, his Pikachu is the best!"

"-Oh yea, I forgot about Pikachu!"

This seemed to be a point they could all agree on.

It was cathartic in a way, to feel everyone pat him on the back, to hear them offer up their condolences, where as only last week it would have felt like a slap in the mouth. Pikachu, who had come to reside on his shoulders seemed likewise pleased as he was favored with pats and more than a couple of favorable scratches from Brock's younger siblings. It was a pretty poignant reminder of just how long he'd been on this journey, that he could remember them much younger than they were now. The oldest three were at least training age, by now, with Forrest just being a little shorter than him, despite being younger by almost a year.

He gave what felt like the first honest smile of excitement in a week, when the eldest of Brock's siblings favored him with a look. "So, I'm sure you came here for a battle, right Ash?"

"You know it!" Ash piped up, displaying the back of his palm, before clenching it into a fist. Pikachu likewise mirrored the motion, with his own cry of excitement

Forrest set up the battlefield environment for the match, kicking aside a few fist sized rocks which Ash suspected might have once been fragments of a larger rock, made piecemeal by an earlier battle. The younger siblings raced to take their spots in the bleachers, stampeding off the field in much the same way they'd come to meet him at the door, and seating themselves ringside on their Brother's end of the field to show their support for him.

Deciding on a three-on-three match and taking their places in the designated trainer positions, they began the battle by selecting their first Pokemon

"Alright, Crobat!" Forrest threw the poke ball out onto the field with a sidearm whip. "Let's do this!"

Ash's choice was simple. "Tauros," he called, tearing the ball from his belt, and hurling it out onto the battlefield. "I choose you!"

The two combatants sized each other up, as they emerged from their poke balls, Crobat taking easily to the sky as Tauros counted off with his hoof impatiently. Forrest was the first to give a command. "Let's open up with a Supersonic attack, Crobat!"

Ash, knowing from experience that Supersonic had a low accuracy, he ordered his Pokemon to advance. "Horn Attack!"

If the sonic attack bothered the bull Pokemon at all, it was not readily apparent, as it charged forward, and leapt impressively at the low-flying poison type, in a near miss physical attack. Ash could hear the gasps of Forrest's younger siblings as Crobat rolled mid-air to avoid the sharp points of Tauros' horns. The massive beast landed with a cloud of dust as momentum served to carry it in a sweeping turn, leaving both combatants facing each other once more.

"Let's see another Supersonic, Crobat!" Forrest called from the opposite end of the field, as the debris from Tauros' three-point landing settled.

Ash nodded with a smile as he ordered up a status-effecting move of his own. "Alright, Tauros, use Scary Face!"

Between Crobat's high-frequency noise attack and Tauro's suddenly terrifying visage, the bull Pokemon's was the stronger. Missing again, Crobat seemed to visibly recoil in the air, while Tauros let out a frightening bellow.

"Now, Tackle!" Ash shouted, drawing another chorus of surprised squeals and gasps from Forrest's side of the gym.

"Cross Poison, quick!" Forest shouted in panic, as Tauros began his charge, preparing again for takeoff.

It was Ash's turn to gasp, when Tauro's caught air, only to take the double overhand slash straight in the face as Crobat brought both of it's wings to bear. Tauros crashed to the ground in the direction he had come and slid through the dirt for a good distance, before getting up, now badly poisoned by the residual glow of the purple 'X' emblazoned into the short, dense fur of his muzzle.

Forrest let out a breath, and ordered his next attack. "Lets try to land another Supersonic, while he's weakened!"

Forrest's strategy was to use Tauros disproportionate strength and stamina against him, Ash realized. First by landing an attack that would confuse Tauros and cause his Pokemon to hurt himself, while Crobat helped the process along, likely with poisonous attacks such as the one it had just landed, or attacks like Leech Life, to bolster it's own defenses. Two could play at that game. Ash beamed as Tauros closed his eyes and became completely still, three tails falling to only swish softly at the ground. The Supersonic again missed it's mark.

"That's it, Tauros," Ash cried. "Use Rest!"

There was no retaliation this time, as Tauros continued to use it's Rest ability to recover from the poisonous attack it had been subjected to, but Forrest seriously considered whether or not he should drop the tactic and go for something more direct, perhaps with Poison type attacks. Of course, the fact that Tauros could simply rest, and rejuvenate itself, mitigating the effects of any such assault, rendered the idea somewhat useless. He needed a Supersonic to get through!

"Crobat," he called desperately. "Supersonic, again!"

Crobat opened his fanged mouth, carrying out his orders with urgency, producing a sound too high-pitched to be heard by human ears that would send almost any Pokemon that picked up on it, into a frenzy. The only problem, was that the waves were easily disrupted and broken up by echoing or poor air-conditions, and did not always have their desired effect. Also, it seemed, they were less than useless on a Pokemon that was asleep.

"Keep trying, Crobat! You can do it!" Forrest and all his siblings began yelling in tandem, in support of the flying Pokemon And keep trying it did, at least three more times, before Tauros eye's flashed open with another Scary Face attack that sent Crobat reeling.

"Horn Attack!" Ash yelled triumphantly, throwing his hand in an aggressive point towards Forrest's ailing Pokemon. Scraping at the hard rock of the battle-field with his leading hoof, Tauros lowered his head and charged... straight at Ash. There was a whoop of excitement from the opposite end of the field at the attack that had finally seemed to get through. At present, Ash had much bigger problems. He could either jump out of the way, and let Tauros fly past him, to ram into something more sturdy, and possibly injure himself, or, he could do what he was about to.

Planting his feet was pointless when compared to the force the Pokemon itself could generate, but as Pikachu dashed to the side, he remained standing, knees slightly bent, and arms outstretched. He caught the bull Pokemon by his horns and leaned in as hard as he could, and found himself sprawling desperately across the carved floor in an effort to stop what simply could not be stopped. The wall was fast approaching behind him, he knew, and if he couldn't bring the Pokemon to a halt he had to at least change his course. He tried wrenching and twisting the horns in one direction or another, but that too was useless.

"Tauros!" Ash yelled, hoping that it would be enough to catch the Pokemon's attention, however briefly. He groaned in disappointment when Tauros didn't even blink. He only had one option left.

_This is gonna hurt_, he thought. "Tauros, use Rage!"

Four hard hooves ground to a stop and limply, so did he. But not for long. The pupil's of Tauros' eyes went white with anger and Ash was taken along for the ride. To Forrest, Ash looked like a flag in harsh winds, as Tauros bucked and sent him swinging by his desperate, two-finger grip, up and onto the Normal-type's back. Ash could only hold on for dear life as the bull Pokemon thrashed and kicked in every direction, working it's way, gradually in a circle. Like his brothers and sisters behind him, he could only cringe every so often when Ash was thrown and tossed like a rag-doll, while he desperately tried to cling to Tauros' barrel-wide midsection from where he was half-seated facing the the wrong direction.

It didn't take long for Ash to get dumped harshly to the floor, where he narrowly avoided being stomped on, as Tauros charged back onto the battlefield, now in a blind, directionless rage. Ash made his way back to his feet, and rubbed the soreness from his backside as he watched his Pokemon make of Crobat. It wasn't very precise, and truly Tauros did probably do a fair amount of damage to himself thrashing around, but every attempt Crobat made to defend himself just made every retaliation that much more ferocious and brutal.

Eventually, Forrest, now quite stunned at the display, was forced to withdraw Crobat. "Well, we tried, pal," he said as his Pokemon returned to it's ball in a beam of red light. He'd hoped that would have gone a little differently, of course, especially since now Tauros wouldn't stop until it passed out from sheer exhaustion, but still, Crobat had done a good job following out his orders, even if they hadn't exactly panned out, and there was certainly something to be said for that, too.

Forrest called out his next Pokemon, Geodude, while Ash, knowing he could do nothing but wait for Tauros to tire himself out, now that he'd played his gambit, set to rubbing the stinging feeling out of his lower back in earnest, as he looked on. Tauros moved in on Geodude relentlessly as it appeared on the field, lowering it's head to crash into the Rock-type at full speed.

"Geodude, use Knock Down!" Forrest yelled, over the angry lowing of the bull Pokemon, and Geodude made ready, flexing it's rocky arms in preparation, quite similar to how Ash had. Only instead of trying to meet the bull Pokemon head on, Geodude pushed down hard on one horn, causing the bovine to dip its head awkwardly in one direction, and drive one horn straight into the ground.

The results were near-catastrophic, and it was now Ash who cringed, watching his Pokemon tumble end over end, as all it's momentum caught up with it, and sent it up and over itself in a heap. "Oooh." Ash groaned in sympathy with an accompanying grimace. What was worse was that Tauros was just too far gone to try a different approach once he got back up. After a good number Knock Down attacks with similar result, to which he could give no answer, Tauros was laid out heaving and groaning, unable to continue fighting. Ash recalled him.

"Take a break, Tauros," he said fondly, in acknowledgment of how hard his Pokemon had pushed itself to win. "You've earned it."

His next Pokemon selection was even simpler than the first. "Bulbasaur, Go!"

The seed Pokemon appeared on the field much to Forrest's chagrin, raring to go, large red eyes scanning for his newest foe. Knowing that it's Grass type moves would be super effective against Geodude, he called out to his Pokemon "Geodude! Keep a safe distance!"

"Vine Whip!"

At that, having heard Forrest's advice, Geodude did a clever handspring, propelling himself away, just barely out of range.

"Rock Throw!"

"Use Vine Whip again to knock it away!"

The attack pattern continued for quite some time, with neither combatant gaining much ground. Bulbasaur would slowly advance and Geodude would retreat, attacking on the move, only to have his every blow parried by Bulbasaur almost effortlessly. Ash was content to just wait it out, since he had the type advantage, Forrest knew, but Geodude was expending far more energy dodging and making it's attacks, than Bulbasaur was deflecting them. Not to mention all the effort that had been put into wrestling Tauros into submission. He didn't have nearly as many options in this match-up as he'd had in the one previous to it. Geodude was a solid physical attacker, with good defenses, meant to fight battles head on. Forrest found himself gnawing on the inside of his cheek as he tried to develop a strategy.

He snapped his fingers, remembering a new TM move that he'd gone over with all of his Pokemon earlier that week. "Let's use Rock Tomb, Geodude!"

The young gym leader watched in satisfaction, as Geodude dodged away from the latest in a series of narrowly-missed Vine Whip attacks, and slapped both of it's stony palms to the ground, causing large sheets of sedimentary rock to leap from the ground some meters away, and stand vertically in the air in formation around Bulbasaur, essentially fencing the grass type in.

"Great job!" Forrest cried. "Now follow it up with Magnitude."

"Duuuude!" The rock-type roiled with the effort, as it clenched harder against the stone floor and let loose with it's attack.

Though the force of Magnitude attack was often unpredictable, the whole gym quaked with the force of the auspiciously powerful quake, making Forrest's siblings up in the stands holler in excitement. Ash and Pikachu who were not quite so used to earthquakes and the like, stumbled awkwardly, narrowly avoiding stepping on each other's feet, as they both worked a precarious orbit around one another before regaining their balance. When it was over, Ash returned his focus to the field, where he knew his direction was needed.

"Ah, Bulbasaur!" He called out loudly, hoping desperately that his Pokemon would answer him. He was relieved when the hardy Pokemon called back to him.

"Bulba!" His Pokemon responded, after giving what sounded like a dust-filled cough.

"Way to stick in there!" Ash whooped, pumping his arm. Rapidly, he let his eyes flash around the barricade of solid stone that had been formed by Geodude's Rock Tomb attack, and was satisfied to see exactly what he was looking for. Cracks, as a result of the powerful vibrations produced by the attack following it, had weakened it. Hopefully, enough to...

"Use Takedown to break free!" Ash ordered, gripping both of his hands at his sides in anticipation. There was a scaping sound which he guessed to be Bulbasaur rearing back to build up momentum, and then a huge crash, as the little Pokemon came charging through the stone barricade in a shower of debris, giving a triumphant growl as he did. Ash jumped into the air, but quickly reigned himself in, as he saw Geodude still recovering from the effort of his previous attack.

"Alright, lets keep up the pressure, but this time, stay on the move!" Ash called out to Bulbasaur encouragingly. "Open up with Razor Leaf!"

Bulbasaur's effective attacks hit their mark this time, as they continued their exchange anew. Geodude managed to get in a few more good blows, but it was not enough to topple the stalwart aggressor, even as beaten up as he'd been by Forrest's one-two combination strike. Eventually nature took it's course, and Geodude could no longer battle, and Bulbasaur stretched to his full height victoriously.

Forrest recalled his Pokemon, with a relaxed expression. "Good effort, Geodude," he said encouragingly to the poke ball, before sliding it back onto his belt, and withdrawing his third and final Pokemon His brothers and sisters behind him were already whispering about it and mostly what they were saying was true. It had been his brother's strongest Pokemon, and he felt that it had gotten even stronger since he'd evolved it.

He threw the poke ball onto the field, and from it, emerged a Pokemon so disproportionately huge, that it seemed to fill it's whole half of the gym alone. Angular metallicc spines, and blocky, flattened teeth hard enough, it appeared, to smash diamonds, coupled with it's already imposing serpentine body of massive steel segments made Steelix quite imposing. Forrest had seen more than just a few new trainers surrender just at the sight of it. But Ash was no such trainer.

"Vine Whip! Try and rope it down!" As it was, the trainer knew that he didn't have much in his arsenal that would work head on against the heavy steel-type defenses of the Iron Snake Pokemon, so the best thing to do would be to keep it from throwing it's weight around, and chip away at it with special attacks. The massive serpent did seem quite surprised at the sheer muscle of the much smaller Grass Type, as it wrapped it's vines around the vestigial spines midway down the Steel Pokemon's body, and tried to pull it down. The tug did yield some result, but nothing like what Ash had been hoping for. Steelix just waited impatiently for the attempt to conclude, swaying only so little under Bulbasaur's strenuous efforts.

Forrest shrugged. The attack wasn't doing Steelix any harm, so he really didn't see any need to strike back at present. Instead, he thought it best to improve his prospects at defeating Ash's two remaining Pokemon in the long term. "Steelix, Harden!"

Bulbasaur kept pulling and for a while Ash cheered him on, desperate to see the massive Pokemon pinned down, the threat of it's size laid to rest. And for that same while, Forrest continued to order his own Pokemon to bolster its defenses with Harden, and use Rock Polish to increase it's speed potential. When at last Bulbasaur had no choice but to take a break and catch his breath, letting the the vines go slack, every inch of Steelix's body shimmered like quartz, reflecting the overhead lighting in all directions.

"Alright, Bulbasaur, you can do it! We gotta get this guy tied down!" Ash yelled. "One more pull!"

The diminutive grass type steeled himself, taking one preparatory step back to tighten up the lines. He grit his teeth, clenched his eyes and prepared to do the impossible.

"Body Purge!" Forrest yelled.

Bulbasaur almost couldn't believe it when he felt the massive Pokemon on the opposite end of his vines finally budge. The seed Pokemon's eyes sprung open to see millions of tiny flecks of glimmering metal cloud away from Steelix's massive body, leaving only the sleek, glass-like, diamond-hard surface of it's tempered iron skin behind. With so much weight shed all at once, Steelix was actually moveable! This was great news, he thought, and kept tugging with renewed vigor. In his excitement, he didn't hear Ash yelling for him to stop.

"Let go! Bulbasaur! Get away!" Ash hollered, cupping his hands, to garner his Pokemon's attention. When he finally did, it was just a split second too late.

"Steelix! Use Slam!" The Pewter City gym leader ordered, with a cheer from his siblings.

The first thing that came to mind, when he saw the way that Steelix was capable of moving, it's immaculate skin made almost frictionless through repeated Harden and Rock Polish moves, was that he was stupid for letting that happen. The second thing, was that Steelix looked like a roller-coaster without a track. So fast that it seemed like he was barely touching the ground, the huge Pokemon cut a wide curve toward Bulbasaur and struck a glancing blow, when the comparably tiny Pokemon was not fast enough to eek out of the way. Even at a reduced weight, it was still much like getting hit by a freight train at high speed. The blow spun Bulbasaur in place, and left him delirious.

"Run!" Ash urged in a panic, again clenching his hands restlessly. "Get up and run!"

Before Bulbasaur could manage it though, Steelix cut another wide, high-speed turn, essentially forming a figure-eight to round on the grass type yet again. "One more!" Forrest directed, and that was enough. The impact sent Bulbasaur sailing. Ash was already off in a low sprint to catch his Pokemon as it soared out of the ring, managing to to so, but only at the expense of falling on his already abused hind end. He heaved a sigh after he was done grimacing, and glanced down at Bulbasaur who looked up weakly at him with such a look of determination that he was almost reluctant to withdraw him.

"Bulbasaur." The grass type managed, as if to tell him he was good to fight, that he was willing to back in, though his body was limp with exhaustion. He had to smile, in spite of the situation.

"Thanks Bulbasaur." he said softly, and tapped the Pokemon's ball against his head, recalling him at close range. As the seed Pokemon disappeared in a burst of red light and he worked himself back to his feet, Pikachu dashed up to join him at ringside and make the return trip.

He thought intensely about his next move as he walked back to the battler's square at his end of the field. He needed a big Pokemon Something that compete with his Steelix's mass, but he'd made trouble for himself by letting the serpent get so fast, it's now nigh-impenetrable defense notwithstanding. He'd always kindof gravitated toward small ultra-mobile Pokemon that were fast and strong attackers, and while there were notable exceptions, a few such being on hand, he now sort of wished he'd have switched Pokemon out before he'd decided to challenge Forrest. He bit the corner of his lip ruefully, and ran through his options. He'd lost Tauros early in the match, and Snorlax didn't have the sort of special attack strength he'd need to pierce Steelix's monstrous defenses, even if his poor speed wasn't an issue. Bulbasaur too was down for the count, and Muk's type spread wasn't particularly good against Steelix, not to mention also being a little on the slow side. He still had Pikachu to send out of course, but Steelix had already proven rather proficient at taking out small, lithe Pokemon when the need arose, and the type situation wasn't anything to be envious of there, either. He knit his brow together. He had to do some real thinking, here. He didn't want his first battle to end up being a loss! If he'd still had Kingler, he could at least try and shoot for a Guillotine and end the match fast, but Misty had pretty much ruined that for him.

He looked at Pikachu. The little yellow powerhouse was still his go-to, no matter how he sliced it, and stood just as good a chance as any other tactic he might employ, in spite of his huge type and size disadvantage. Somehow he and his partner had found wins, in spite of taller odds than this, in the past. "You wanna give it a try?"

Pikachu tugged on his pant-leg and pointed rather articulately at his belt in objection to that idea though, instead of saying anything in response. When Ash's eyes met with what Pikachu was trying to indicate to him, he grumbled in irritation and jerked on the hemof his hoodie so that it covered his belt and the poke ball that contained Misty's Gyrados.

"Nah," he said with something akin to disgust, disregarding the input as simply as that. "Why don't you get in there and give it a shot?"

"Pikapi," his partner protested, pulling just a bit harder, evidently in no huge hurry to fight an overwhelmingly uphill battle when it wasn't necessary. "Pikachupi ka."

Ash squinted his eyes painfully and ran gloved fingertips through his hair, which felt very strange without a hat to cover it. "Ugh," he offered, trying again to end the line of suggestion, without comment.

Across the field, on Forrest's side, his younger siblings grew impatient. Though Forrest tried to shush them, waving his arms dramatically, he didn't have the same sort of clout that his older brother did.

"C'mon!"

"We're waiting!"

"What's taking so long!"

Ash just continued to look at his Pokemon miserably.

"Piii kaaa!" Temper breaking, Pikachu finally broke out the threat of electrical shock, a tool which the little Pokemon frequently employed to keep his trainer in line. As tiny electrical sparks popped in the air around his partner's cheeks, and dangerously close to his leg, Ash conceded.

"Fine!" He erupted angrily. "Stupid Misty, and her stupid..." his voice lowered to an irate mumble, which faded into disdainful silence as he rolled his head in theatrical agony, before claiming the traded poke ball with a rough, impatient snatch. He gave it a look of contempt, that slowly turned into one of apprehension. He favored his partner with an ugly look. "You're not allowed to tell her I did this. I already said I didn't want to."

Pikachu shrugged noncommittally. "Pika."

"Some friend you are." Ash said with a click of his tongue, and ruefully threw the poke ball onto the field.

* * *

Misty stepped through the door from the garage into the hall, to spot her sisters watching television in the living room instead of running the gym. Though she had expected it, she wasn't particularly happy about it. Tossing her jacket over the back of the couch between them, she cleared her throat. Neither Lily nor Violet were listening, though.

Misty glanced up at the television, so see what was so important.

"It's clear that this was just a deliberate attempt to scare people. The saber-rattlers in the Viridian Police force point the blame at Team Rocket, because they're afraid to acknowledge the real threat." A talking head cable-news personality told her. "The Pokemon Liberation Front has landed here in Kanto, people. There's no sense in denying what's perfectly clear."

Misty felt her brows arch up exceeding high.

"The PLF wants organized Pokemon training, coordinating and capture to end, and they're not afraid to utilize violence to do it. It seems rather clear to me, that this recent attempt on Viridian City was deliberately to let the world know that they still exist and that their agenda is still gives them reason to hate us, and our culture."

She felt them rise just a little bit further, almost to the point that it was painful. "Why are you watching this?" she asked, helplessly.

"Because we finished your chores, already." Violet waved over her shoulder dismissively.

"Like, get off our backs," Lily said, with a similar motion.

"Rest assured, people, the Pokemon Liberation Front hates everything about us, and will stop at nothing, to see their new-world order brought to fruition."

She let her eyebrows fall and gave a strong roll of her eyes, along with an exasperated exhale. Her sisters were prejudiced, opinionated and impressionable, which made them conspiracy theorists all.

"You honestly buy into that crap?" she asked incredulously.

Instead of answering, her sisters shushed her and Daisy took a seat beside them to watch the local cable-access program.

"I think the evidence is pretty clean-cut here. The nature of this bombing attempt is very similar to the one that was successfully performed in Isshu."

"You know that happened ten years ago right?" she questioned, folding her arms. "Doesn't that seem a little paranoid to you?"

"Get informed Misty, seriously," Violet interjected.

"Like, you're such a mindless Mareep," Lily concurred, using the conspiracy theorist catch-phrase for someone who wasn't insane enough to subscribe to their "wisdom" on matters such as these.

"I don't think it ever hurt anybody to watch the news, Misty," Daisy said in what sounded like a diffusing way, when really Misty knew she was just agreeing with the older two.

Misty rolled her eyes and scoffed. It figured. Rather than start a big argument, though, she just took the key to the gym off the hallway table, and turned right around. She'd worked in a good nap on the drive back, and she had work to do, no doubt. She was thankful when she closed the door behind herself, and blocked away the sound of Daisy showing off her newest purchases. Eyeballing the poke ball on her belt, she decided to open it for the first time today.

The spiny crustacean Pokemon appeared in a flare of red light, and was visibly given pause at the sight of her, looking around ever so slightly. It wasn't that they were unfamiliar, though. Misty had faced off against Kingler in her Whirl Cup battle against Ash. A battle she'd won, if only due to a healthy amount of luck and patience. She extended her hand and sat it gently around the top of Kingler's massive claw.

"Hey," she said nicely. "You must be wondering where you are."

"Ko ki," the crab Pokemon responded in a frothy drawl.

"C'mon," she said with a smile. "I'll show you around."

She stepped to the side, and began walking the path out and around to the Gymnasium, allowing Kingler to turn in place and clamber after her, as she took up a relaxed pace. "I'm going to be taking care of you for a while, Kingler."

"Ko ki ko." Kingler protested, stopping suddenly, but Misty turned and stopped as well to placate the water Pokemon. She didn't understand exactly what he'd meant, but she understood his apprehension.

"It's just for a little while," she explained with a smile. "You don't have to worry."

"Ko ki." Kinger said, and was seemingly satisfied with that. At least enough to continue following her as she took them around to the front.

"This," She said, pointing up at the massive vaulted arena structure. It was still undergoing renovations of course, but the all glass facade and superstructure were still very impressive by her reckoning. She had convinced her sisters to do away with the massive stucco Seel, much to her satisfaction, and now all that remained was a sleek, professional looking superstructure, in the styling of a modern sports complex, with just enough architectural gloss to convince her sisters to sign off on it. "Is the new Cerulean City Gym."

Her and Ash's Kingler looked up at it for a moment, and she felt her smile widen. "I want to train the strongest water-type Pokemon in the world here." She crossed her arms. "I want this to be the best gym in Kanto. The best anywhere, some day." Looking down at Kingler, she could see that her words were having the desired effect. "See, I want to be a Water Pokemon Master," she confessed. "Sorta like Ash."

Kingler perked at the mention of it's trainer. "Koki ko!"

"Ash is working hard to make it back into the Indigo League." She said, offering explanation for his absence, as she unlocked the front door, and let them inside. "I thought that maybe you might like to undergo some special training so that you're stronger than ever, when that time comes." She implied, hoping that Kingler was cut from the same sort of stock as his trainer, as she gestured down the open hall from the lobby to the double-doors that led to the pool.

"Koki!" Kingler agreed, following along happily and confirming her suspicion with gusto.

She went to go lead him on but was given pause as a lemony, and slightly acrid smell wafted into her sinuses. She muffled a growl. How many times did she have to tell Lily not to use the commercial cleaners in here! Some of that stuff had TSP in it and people walking through here could get it on their shoes, which would do the Pokemon absolutely no kind of good since they relied on a very specific pH balance in the pool. She didn't know exactly what Trisodium Phosphate was, but she knew that not even their fancy new filter was gonna take care of it if some trainer tracked it into the pool.

She kicked her shoes off as she made it to the doors and tossed them off to the side.

"Well, training with me isn't going to be easy," she said, failing to muscle down her sudden anger, as she contemplated why, for the life of her, she was the only one with any sense around here. She pushed the heavy double doors open, determined to have some order around here. "I don't know what you're used to with Ash and the Professor, but I run a pretty tight ship here and-

Her warning turned to a scream, mid sentence, as she was hit head on with a jet of water that pushed her back out the door, flailing desperately to hide her face from the pressurized blast. All of her Pokemon looked up from the rambunctious game they had been partaking in, quite surprised to see what had just happened.

A spirited game of keep-away with a pool buoy acting as the object of interest, was cut short as the Gym's resident Pokemon all stopped to stare in shock at what they'd accidentally done. Corsola, skidded to a halt where it it had been dashing along the side of the pool wildly firing Water Gun attacks, trying like most of the other Pokemon to reclaim the buoy from Staryu and Starmie, who'd been keeping it aloft with and with Swift attacks for quite some time from their almost unfair aerial vantage as they hovered at either edge of the pool, some distance above it's surface and well out of the reach of the others. Horsea's expression, like all of the other inhabitants of the pool, was one of surprise and apprehension. Even faceless Starmie and Staryu seemed to freeze mid-air and luster in a way that suggested panic.

She thought for a moment about getting angry. About really losing her temper and having the good long screaming fit she'd been wanting to have all day. She'd had a pretty miserable afternoon what with being conned into shopping with Daisy for half the day, coming home to find the entirety of the chores her sisters had sworn to do (she'd made them swear after all) had been either half-assed or skimmed over, and the simple fact that she had very little else to occupy her mind other than her stolen bicycle.

But these were her Pokemon, after all. Not her sisters. Not the people who'd stolen her bike. And she'd already missed the chance to have it out with either of those groups of people. Her fault. Not her Pokemon's. So she pushed that thought as far away from herself as she could get it and wiped her bangs out of her face. It's not like she didn't deserve it anyways. She'd tried to act like a big hard-ass in front of Kingler, and her Pokemon had just guided the hand of karma to put her back in her place. Really, she thought, you couldn't _buy_ guidance like that. Sometimes it just took real friends, and Misty was friends with all her Pokemon.

When she glanced over her Pokemon, though, she did feel the corner of her mouth twitch mischievously, though. Kingler particularly, was looking nervously between her and her Pokemon as though it wasn't really sure how it should react to the scene, trying desperately to hold in a foamy chortle. Quickly, she pasted on a furious expression and turned to face Kingler fully. When the water type swallowed his laughter with an audible gulp and took the smallest step away, she cracked up.

"On second thought, I don't think you have to worry." She managed, in between guffaws, that she was soon sharing with all her Pokemon, Kingler included. "You oughta fit right in, here."

"So, I think there have been a few new additions, since we saw each-other last," she explained, after she collected herself.

"You remember Goldeen, and Horsea, right?" she asked, pointing two fingers at the aquatic Pokemon Kingler bobbed to show a nod.

"And of course, there's Staryu, and Starmie," she indicated again. "Corsola," She noted, flicking her finger sideways. "Oh, and there's mine and my sister's Luvdisc; Casein and Luverin!" Ever the romantic deep down, she couldn't help but sigh at the thought of how Casein and Luverin's love had so profoundly effected the whole audience that day, which so prominently came to mind whenever she saw them.

"Poor Marill is still asleep at the house, so you'll have to meet her later" She noted, still feeling a little guilty for her behavior earlier today, which she was sure greatly contributed to Marill's restlessness.

"Oh," she yelped in recollection, reaching down onto her belt for the two poke balls she had taken with her. "I almost forgot."

Without bothering to get to her feet, she cast the orbs out into the pool to join the group. "Politoed," she signified, before the light of the poke ball had even faded "and..."

Her voiced faded a bit, and she was admittedly thrown for a loop, having expected the last of her Pokemon to be considerably smaller. As she lifted her eyes up to slowly take in the massive length of the last Pokemon, she was completely taken aback.

"...Gyrados?" she gasped. "Wait, if you're here, then that means..."

* * *

"...Psyduck?"

Not feeling as though that question had an answer, or really needed all that much follow up, Ash just stood there for a long moment, hoping that he was suffering another symptom of memory loss, and that he was in fact looking at a Gyrados, which he knew to be total powerhouses in battle, and not Misty's Psyduck, which was notably the opposite. A glance at his partner, who seemed likewise nonplussed by Psyduck/Gyrados' appearance told him that he was not.

"Thanks so _much_ for your advice, pal," Ash groaned. "Oh, and before I forget, thank _**you**_, Misty!" He snarled up towards the ceiling.

"Piiiikaaaachu," Pikachu groaned.

"Well, there went all hope I had," The trainer said with a sigh, flopping his hand about in displeased way. "Way to kick me while I'm down. I guess this is what I get for being such a good friend!"

"Worst practical joke _ever_," Ash groaned bitterly, "and the punchline is Psyduck."

Pikachu, unable to take anymore of his negativity, gave him the big solid shock that he'd threatened earlier, leaving the boy dancing erratically as the surge passed through him, before dumping him in a steaming heap. The high voltage seemed to reboot his system or at least jump-start his confidence though, once he got to his feet.

"Alright, alright, alright!" Conceding, he stood and dusted himself. Just because he couldn't see himself winning this one, didn't mean he wasn't still obligated to give it his all. Even in the Sinnoh League, he'd gone down swinging!

That was all well and good, he supposed, when you had someone idea of what to do. "Ah! Dodge it!" he yelled suddenly in panic.

Psyduck turned to look at him quizzically though, instead of focusing on the monstrous and expeditious Iron Tail headed his way, like he should have. "Psy?" the water Pokemon quacked at him just a split second before a massive surge of air and steel batted him across the arena, causing Ash to make a very pained expression out of sympathy, and cover his eyes with both hands.

When he parted two fingers, he could see Psyduck land in a mushroom cloud of dust on the far end of the battlefield. Things were not looking up.

"Tackle!" Forrest ordered his Pokemon in before Ash could muster a response, and the gigantic steel beast rammed it's wedge-shaped head into the ground, where Psyduck had landed before the dust could even clear, raising a new plume of it, larger and thicker than before.

"Psyduck!" Ash cried with frustration. Honestly, he didn't really know what commands to make. He'd battled with Psyduck before but it had been a very long time ago indeed. What moves did Psyduck even know? "Do something!"

"One more time, Steelix!" Forrest commanded, and like an immense battering ram, Steelix descended on the same spot again, with megaton force.

But something stopped him. A pale blue nimbus lit the air and spread across Steelix's faceted, crystalline body, showering the room in an ethereal light that drew gasps from Forrest and his siblings, and that Ash too would have probably considered the one of the more beautiful sights he'd seen to date, had he not been so suddenly happy.

"Psychic!" The young trainer howled, "Nice!" He'd almost forgotten that little idiosyncrasy. Psyduck had to take a few lumps to the head to do it, and honestly, Psychic was well beyond his abilities otherwise as a battler. Maybe it was the constant headache. Ash kinda figured that'd make it hard to focus.

Speaking of focus, he was made aware, as Steelix bucked hard against the glow of Psyduck's telekinetic attack, that he needed to think of something, and fast. Psychic had worked, sure. For now, at least. And to Psyduck's credit, it had bought him a little time, but it wasn't strong enough to really damage Steelix because of the overall type spread. Forrest's behemoth was strong against Psychic type moves.

What he needed was a good water-type move, something that could really get the momentum running in his direction again. That was the problem though, he thought, reaching up to physically grab the top of his head in consternation. Did Psyduck know any moves like that?

"Uh, Um, H-How about Bubble!" he yelled towards the squat yellow bird who stared blue-eyed and transfixed at it's towering conquest.

"Pii kaachu," his partner reminded him.

"Of course Psyduck don't learn that move," Ash shot back in annoyance. "I knew that. I was just making sure you knew."

"Pikapi."

"Fine," Ash tutted. "Psyduck, use Water Pulse!"

The telekinetic water-fowl stopped its silently mantra, and turned to regard him as Steelix crashed rather harmlessly and anti-climatically to the ground, kicking up a huge wave of dust as it collided with the bare stone floor. "Psy?"

"You don't know Water Pulse?" Ash asked, but then decided he already knew the answer, and let out a small, expedited huff. "W-well, Water Gun, then!"

"Duck?"

"Oh, c'mon, I've seen you use that one before!" Ash pleaded. He really needed something, and he needed it now. Once Steelix was back up and at 'em, his overwhelming speed and defenses would be too much for even a type advantage to balance out, and there was no counting on Psyduck to use Psychic twice in one sitting.

"Psy-y-y!" Psyduck quacked at him, as if to complain about being rushed, but both he and Pikachu practically had their toes over the line of the trainer square in apprehension.

"C'mon, before it's too-"

A massive dark shape loomed for only a split second in the darkness provided by the kicked up debris-cloud, and then burst into the light like the crystal clear spray of a geyser. Ash still couldn't believe how much like a polished gemstone Steelix looked, and struggled to stay focused on what was going on.

Which didn't help much, as currently, his Pokemon, or rather, Misty's was sailing through the arena again, this time towards him, courtesy of another insanely fast Iron Tail.

Ash took a step back, and a step to the right, thinking he'd judged correctly to catch the wayward duck in his cradling arms. As it turned out, he was forced to jump at the last moment, and catch Psyduck at his full reach. He lost balance and once more fell on his bruised behind, drawing a groan and a scowl.

Psyduck, who seemed to Ash, either willing and able to continue, or at least too stupid to realize the danger he was in, waddled out of his grasp and back onto the field. He felt very guilty then, where Psyduck was concerned.

Psyduck probably thought Misty was around somewhere, watching him. The quirky little guy didn't have much going for him, but he was always pretty eager to please his trainer, even if more often than not it meant inadvertently irritating her. Ash tried not to chuckle at that thought. Maybe he wasn't the only one Misty was always griping at, in that respect.

Not that he was eager to please Misty. He grimaced at the idea. Gross.

Still, it was pretty obvious that Psyduck had little to no idea what was going on, was desperately outmatched and was only going to end up getting hurt in a fight that he honestly couldn't win at this point. Ash was a lot of things, and you certainly could have found more than one count of blind pursuit of victory on his track record, but he wasn't the type to pointlessly lead a Pokemon to slaughter, and expect victory. That wasn't just cruel, it also smacked a bit of Paul, and he wasn't about to have that.

He favored his friend with a look of misery, and said the words he desperately did not want to say. "Maybe we ought to call this one, Pikachu."

"P-pikapi!" his furry partner exclaimed. "Pii pikachu!"

He met his friend's rebuke with equal fervor. "I mean it!" He pointed onto the field where Forrest's Steelix was running a tight circular orbit around Psyduck who was merely standing dumbfounded in the middle of it all. "Psyduck is gonna get seriously hurt if this keeps going."

"Pika? Kachu pikachu..." Pikachu moaned dolefully.

"Yea, I know." Ash sighed, "Look, we can always try again tomorrow, right?"

It almost broke his heart to see his companion look down at the floor, in such obvious dejection. This match was important. To both of them. It was supposed to be their first win and a good first step in the right direction. Instead it would be a sour reminder that they were taking a tough path, and that no part of this was going to be easy. He refused to acknowledge that it might've also been an indicator that all his fears were correct. He wasn't going to let himself be so easily discouraged as all that. Still, this one win, this one premiere victory, as important as it might've been, wasn't worth trading Psyduck's well-being, or his dignity was a trainer. He hoped that Pikachu would see it that way too.

He held Psyduck's poke ball out at arms length. "I'm sorry buddy."

"Pika," his partner responded quietly.

"Steelix is too fast, and too tough." Ash turned the ball in his gloved fingertips so that the elevated portion of the capturing surface was directed toward his newest acquisition, and rested the tip of his index on the return button.

"And I can't get Psyduck's head in the fight," He said with finality.

But really, what truth was there in that? Wasn't it just that he couldn't get _his_ head into the fight? Psyduck wasn't his Pokemon! He wasn't really used to handling it. He didn't know how to work with the eccentric bird, and he wasn't certain he was ever going to learn. He felt his eyes close, as he tried to reign in the resentment that he was beginning to feel, turning his head and squinting his eyes painfully to keep from crying.

He wasn't really sure who was to blame here. Was he even allowed to blame someone, anymore? He'd felt almost instant resentment for Psyduck, the second he'd been there instead of Gyrados. And that was wrong, he knew it. So that had been pushed aside to blame Misty, who was, as he saw it, the person that was responsible for this whole fiasco to begin with. This was as deliberate an attempt to humiliate him as she'd ever made and what was worse was that it'd worked, probably better than she knew. He'd never say so, of course, but... Well, it didn't matter anyways. It was done now. He'd make sure she got what was coming to her, later. So who was to blame? There had to be someone.

He screwed his face up. It was him. He never should have let Steelix get so ramped up. His shortsightedness had cost him this fight. He really didn't have anyone else to blame but himself. Just like always. And that, of course, was much, much worse.

_"...You're the only person I can count on... If it seems frustrating, I'm asking you to persevere."_

Ash felt his eyes spring open then, at the words that came sourceless to mind, and he was forced to blink rapidly in the face of the earnest reminder they presented him. If he wanted to fix this problem he was responsible for, he would have to rely on himself, to fix it.

And he could start by having a little more faith in himself, he knew. He needed to Psych himself-

The idea ran through him like a lightning-bolt, which was a fair comparison for him to draw, since many had. He instantly whipped the ball back to his belt and howled to Psyduck the one command that could turn this all around. That could right the mistakes he'd made, and keep Psyduck from getting battered up by his vastly outranking opponent. The sheer suddenness and intensity of his command practically bowled Pikachu over, though he was quickly back to his feet with the same sort of nagging apprehension that now had Ash practically eating half his left fist.

"_**Psych Up!**_"

Ash gnawed leather, hoping desperately that Psyduck both knew the attack and didn't have some sort bizarre restriction tick similar to his requirement of concussive trauma to use Psychic. It would be just his luck if Psyduck needed to have a good bellyache going to use Psych Up. Still, if Psyduck had time to do anything, Ash couldn't see it. Steelix reared from his circling path and struck with a huge Slam attack. Ash practically gagged on his own hand. Was he too late? Had he made a mistake? Regret, and shame hung in his gut.

But wait, No! There was no dust this time, because Steelix's heavy tail hadn't made it to the ground. A loud, metallic ringing hung in the air, as though the Steel-type's attack had hit something of equal hardness. Psych Up was a move only very adept Psychic Pokemon could use, in order to hypnotize themselves into taking on all the altered traits of their opponent. Steelix was still super fast, and super tough. But now, so was Psyduck!

"Yes!" Ash hollered fanatically. "_Yesyesyes_!"

Steelix's heavy, deliberate attacks rained down again and again and again, but to no avail, as Psyduck stood and took the brunt of them with little expenditure. A deep clanging echoed in the gym with each fruitless impact of the Steel-type's enormous tail. Ash could still see Psyduck looking at him quizzically, in spite of the feverish assault Forrest and his Pokemon were mounting, seeming for all the world as though he were simply unaware of what was even happening. It did not seem like so much of a stretch, as Ash remembered it. Psyduck had always seemed mostly oblivious. The fact remained though, that he still needed Psyduck to win this fight, not just weather the storm, here. He needed a water-type attack.

He decided to stick with what he knew.

"Psyduck!" Ash howled. "It's on you now! You need to use Water Gun, if we're gonna win this!"

Psyduck seemed to give this matter much more consideration than it really required, as the massive blows collided painlessly, it seemed with his bulbous head, threatening to drive him into the ground like a railroad spike if nothing else. If the duck was bothered at all, it didn't show. The metal on metal sound continued to report through the arena with every swing.

When Psyduck turned and fired off his attack, Ash almost couldn't believe it. They were both fast, now, sure, but Psyduck was as a matter of simple physics, a much smaller target. With Steelix's physical attacks now next to useless, if even only a percentage of Psyduck's Water Gun attacks hit their mark, it would still eventually draw the match to a close.

Ash spent most of the battle of attrition wondering how it had so quickly gone from a no win situation to this? How close really, was the cusp of success to the brink of failure? Was there really such distinction? It was food for thought, he knew that much. He just needed to keep his head on straight, if he wanted to see these things. When, at long last, Steelix could no longer hold his massive head, and slumped onto the ground in a heap, unable to fight after being essentially nicked and scraped into submission by Psyduck's repeated attacks, he did not react immediately. At least not in the way Forrest's brother's and sisters did. They practically exploded from the stands in wild, unbelieving cheers. Even Forrest applauded and smiled.

He smiled. _Guess everybody likes a good comeback story_, he thought.

As Forrest recalled his downed Pokemon with his own words of praise, Ash turned his attention to the Water-type who had defeated the odds. Admittedly, it had been a long shot, when he'd called for Psych Up, which was a very high-level move. Just a hunch, more than anything. It was certainly just as much a credit to Psyduck for knowing it, as it was to him, for ordering it up. But it had worked...and almost _well_! Slowly, he walked out onto the field. Stopping in front of the still confused bird, Ash turned his head to the side and regarded his partner. This morning, he had despised the idea of training one of Misty's Pokemon, and he'd been just a bit more disinclined to when he'd found out it was Psyduck. He still wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea, and honestly, Psyduck's airheadedness was a little disconcerting when he had his own famous lack of common sense to contend with.

"What do you think?" he asked his sage companion, who was probably far more capable of making the call than he was.

Pikachu looked back and then crossed his arms, taking stock of what he saw in Psyduck. His trainer was a real fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants sort some times, but it was certainly true that Ash's best quality as a battler and often as a friend, was his ability to improvise. Personally, he'd always felt like Psyduck's often touch-and-go nature was more in tune with Ash's style of doing things, than it ever had been with Misty. Still, more _reliability_ would help.

"Pi." The electric type shrugged tentatively. "Pika pika pi."

Ash nodded in agreement. "I think so too."

Reaching down, he picked up the little yellow bird, and hoisted him up into the air in celebration. No matter what he decided, this victory meant something, and Psyduck deserved his thanks for that. He could barely contain his elation on the matter, in fact. It felt like a big weight had slipped off his back. Setting the water-type back down, with a big grin, he stepped back.

"You fought great today, Psyduck," Ash mused. He still hadn't made his mind up one way or another, but he had yet to welcome Misty's Pokemon to the group.

"Looks like you're gonna be traveling with us for a while," he said, flashing a thumbs up. "At least as far as Cerulean City."

"Psyduck!" The hapless Pokemon quacked in delight.

_But maybe longer_, Ash thought, and grinned in spite of himself when he saw the gleaming Boulder Badge in Forrest's hand as he approached.

* * *

A/N: I'm sure the editing isn't great. Still. Sorry! Aaaand, If you didn't care for the battling as much as I did, don't fret; Brock and Dawn start the next chapter.


	8. Chapter VIII

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon Pinball or otherwise.

Chapter Summary: Brock and Dawn decide what their futures hold without Ash, while the Pallet town trainer bumps into friends and enemies, new and old on his trip through Mt. Moon.

A/N: Feelin' good about this one, even though it took so long. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter VIII**

"Our Separate Ways"

Dawn practically backhanded herself trying to wipe away the sticky remains of tears that coated her cheeks, when Brock poked his head ever so slightly through the crack of her bedroom door. Her mother had departed only moments ago and she hadn't been expecting another visitor so soon. She was done crying for now, but she had always liked a certain amount of composure in presenting herself. Especially for Ash and Brock. She liked for them to think the best of her, after all.

The thought brought a constricting feeling of shame to her chest, though, and a bluish blush to her cheek. She'd really embarrassed herself earlier and could barely stand to look up at her companion, as she nodded her acceptance of his request to enter. His stare wasn't nearly so intense in reality as it felt to her, but she knew it was there. Her mother hadn't been too harsh about the way she'd acted earlier, probably because she knew just why she'd done it. She had however, made it clear that she owed Brock an apology and Dawn did have every intention of giving it. She desperately did not want to be seen as the self-absorbed person she'd acted like downstairs.

"Sometimes you have to accept the things you can't change." Johanna had said, very knowingly. "It's hard sometimes, I know how it is." Her mother had lot of rich experiences and huge success as a coordinator, but also, as a person. And that was chiefly the experience she'd drawn on for this nugget of advice, Dawn imagined.

"We go out on these huge journeys, and the world is our Cloyster," she had exemplified with a smile. "We work so hard with our friends and our Pokemon, to grow and to improve."

"But sometimes we forget that we only live our own life," she said, raising an important point, distinguishing it with a gentle prod to her daughter's shoulder. "And that we can't change how someone else sees the world, just by wanting it bad enough."

She'd turned the prod into a gentle caress, that soothed some of the pain from her daughters expression. "If Ash needs to go on training alone to grab hold of his dream, you shouldn't be upset about it," she reminded, "and you shouldn't try to undermine him, either. It's just the reality of it."

"People go their separate ways all the time, chasing after what they want out of life, Dawn." she explained, "but it doesn't mean they have to stop being friends when they do, or that the time they spent together was wasted."

"I know," she'd muttered softly. "I just..." She'd stuck out her lip and sniffed, beginning the sobbing fit that had brought her face to its current saline state. "I didn't want it to eh-eh-end! N-now it's all, all, all." She'd gotten caught in a loop momentarily before pressing her face into her mother's blouse, and letting out one long moan. "Ove-er!"

"No, sweetie," her mom had promised. "Things are just starting for you."

Those words did give her some strength now, while she sat gnawing on her bottom lip, looking at spot her floor, trying not to bust out the water works again as Brock took a seat on the foot of her bed, opposite her. She could accept this, she guessed. It would still hurt, but she could cry a little later if she had to.

"So that's it." She said softly, barely daring to say so aloud. She wasn't naïve enough to try to continue believing that everything was going to turn out right, but confirming it was just a bit beyond what she was willing to commit to it.

Brock nodded. "Ash is training solo. It's a done deal." For him too, it seemed that actually saying so was difficult. She knew this was not the first time those two had gone their separate ways; though the two boys did not often talk about the finer details of their earlier journeys, if only just as a consideration to her, the implication was there through the many stories she _had_ heard. She guessed this separation represented somewhat more than those previous, even for Brock. She didn't think that their past partings had been at the expense of an emotional loss and sudden disappearance. But then, maybe, like her, Brock had something else on his mind.

She stuck her lip under her top row of teeth as she felt it tremble. She hadn't known Ash for the longest time and she hadn't made the sort of connection with him that she was sure Brock had, over what was now close to half a decade of joint travel-time, but even _she_ could say that Ash had profoundly touched her life. Even though he was not a coordinator, and he was not exactly the picture of a mentor, he was, in a way, something like that to her in almost every sense that Brock was. Foremost, Ash had taught her a profound love of Pokemon that she simply hadn't known before, and doubted she ever would have learned without him.

All her ribbons. All of her victories, and her runner-up status in her very _first _Grand Festival, (an accomplishment she knew not even her mother could match) those all belonged to _her_ and her alone. She had her own hard work, her own perseverance and her own skill to thank for those things. But Ash had helped her with the less rewarding parts, that she now knew were just as important as what she'd gained on her own.

She'd learned from Ash how to truly be a good person and a good friend, especially to ones Pokemon. As much as Ash carried on and mucked about sometimes, underneath, he was a deeply kind and loving person and that showed. Maybe even more to her than to Brock, since as a girl she assumed that she was far more naturally "in tune" with those sorts of things.

Ash cared so much, loved his Pokemon so much, that it almost made her feel like she was phoning it in sometimes. As much pep and excitement as she'd ever showed for her next contest, as much hard work and tireless effort as she was willing to sink into practice, just to make sure her and her Pokemon could go out there and put on a good show, Ash was willing to give ten times more than she felt like she'd ever _have_ to give, just for the sake of a Pokemon's happiness. It didn't even have to be his! Ash would try to move mountains just to make things work out okay for a Pokemon or even a person who was down on their luck, _even _if it was their own fault to begin with!

She could be thoughtful. She could be kind. She could even be downright selfless when the situation arose that called for it. But Ash was on a whole other level. Ash was who "nice guys" and "heroes" pretended to be. She'd watched Ash do things she was convinced no other person would ever be capable of mustering up the courage to try, much less want to do of their own free will, without even being asked. Ash was happy to do them, no less. It seemed like he would never even expect anything in compensation for it, either. That she'd had a chance to stand beside him, to glean from his unerring courage even just a few of those times, had taught her more than most ever learned about what it meant to stand together as part of a truly great team.

Ash had led them all to do truly amazing things, more than once, where alone, she had no doubt that they'd have failed utterly or shied away! And the worst part? It was like Ash didn't know these things about himself. Or at least, didn't seem to think it was at all worth mentioning. There was never a "Did you see how I saved the day?" or a "How cool did I look?" comment later. Those always came over something more mundane, like a narrowly won battle, or a log in the middle of their path that he was impressed he could clear in one jump. The fact that he could not climb any higher up the ladder as a_ trainer_ rather than as a _paragon_ was what was tearing him up. Up till now she had felt like he was stupid for it, but her mother's words had reminded her of what people sacrificed to fulfill their dreams.

Ash was giving it everything he had, when everything in the world was telling him to quit. The door to the Sinnoh league slammed shut in his face, and he'd gone home to start a new training regiment. Every friend he had, it seemed like, was trying to get him to stop, and still he was out there alone, busting his hump, just to improve himself right. She wouldn't come right out and say so, mostly because she felt like it would've been a strange thing to say to someone who was so close to her, but Ash, for all of his faults- and he certainly did have his fair share- was probably the one person she _most _looked up to. She would always be like her mother, in many ways; That much was inevitable, and she definitely liked the idea, since her mom was almost everything she hoped to achieve in her own life.

But she knew that she would always strive to be more like Ash.

She decided she could be angry about him leaving, upset for as long as she liked -and she was- but she was always going to come back to that, no matter what. It was going to stick with her for the rest of her life, after all. Those times, truly _all_ the time they'd spent together -almost a year and a half filled to the brim- those were going to be the milestones by which she would judge the rest of her career as a coordinator and her worth as a person. She could sit here and cry about how she was going to have to leave that behind, or she could reinvest it and move forward. The choice was hers to make. Would this be the end of what she'd learned, or just the beginning?

She looked back to Brock. Was he thinking the same things, as well? She could see that the smile on his face had drooped a bit since he'd last made eye-contact, to encompass only half of its former real estate. It was now only a lopsided curl of his lips, without any real connotations whatsoever. Of course he was, she realized. He had to be. Maybe he wasn't as in tune or whatever, but certainly he'd seen much more of Ash than she had. Wouldn't he, if she was so affected, feel similar, if not worse?

"I'm sorry for..." Dawn began airily, sniffing and trying to straighten herself up a bit. She caught sight of herself in her bedside mirror and looked sharply away, displeased by her disheveled hair and puffy eyes, "for saying all those things. To your friend Misty and to you. I didn't mean to-"

Brock cut her off simply with a wave of his open palm. Not disregarding, but totally dismissive of the issue. "Misty and I both have a lot of siblings," he said in a very diplomatic way. "If there's one thing we get, it's that people say things they don't mean when they're upset, Dawn."

Dawn felt her lip quiver again as she looked into Brock's entirely accepting face. She was going to miss Brock too. His placating ways, his entirely over-the-top domestic abilities. She'd even miss his hopeless romanticism, in a way. You could always, ALWAYS count on Brock to be there for you. Dependable was his middle name, and he practically knew everything there was to know about traveling, about Pokemon, about anything you cared to ask! Brock had to be the best older brother in the world.

She tried to turn her look of misery into a weak smile, but it was no use. She felt two hot tears streak down either side of her face and she palmed them away in frustration. Why did this have to be so hard? She was going to miss them both so much. Traveling with them had seemed the best thing that had ever happened to her. Knowing she had to keep her head high, she sidled close to him on the bed, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She tried not to get his vest wet, as she hugged him tight, and sniffed.

"I'm gonna miss you guys," she groaned, as Brock accepted the gesture with a pat across her back.

"Who said I was going anywhere?" Brock asked, rearing back in surprise.

Truthfully, he wanted nothing more than to be out of _here_. Being trapped in this house seemed something like a term of imprisonment, and every moment more seemed to compound the feeling of complete awkwardness that he felt he was bringing into their home, just by being here. But still, he didn't think he had ever out-and-out said that Ash deciding to travel solo meant the absolute dissolution of their group. It was, after all,_ Ash's_ decision to travel on his own. Not theirs. If they could both grudgingly come to terms with that, who was to say they couldn't just travel onward on their own, as Ash and Co. minus one? Granted, precedent was that he'd only ever really traveled with Ash, for any length of time, but he was open to change.

He liked Dawn. She was spirited, and though she had her streaks of not so flattering qualities, much like Ash himself, she was a very nice girl, with a lot going for her. Surely Dawn was just as worthy of a keystone position as Ash. Admittedly, it would be a little strange for him, but like most things, all it would take to adjust was a little time. His skills and his learning were not mutually exclusive to following a trainer around after all. He could just as easily learn from and with a coordinator.

"You're-" Dawn began, before her lips involuntarily curled up and into her mouth in the most grievous display of emotional relief Brock thought he'd ever seen. "I just thought that, since Ash..."

Brock smiled sympathetically and just shook his head, while she vigorously wiped her face, trying to keep herself from laughing and crying intermittently.

* * *

Holiday wasn't hung up on appearances, except those that made him harder to understand; which was probably why being stuck in a cave didn't bother him too much. Doc, however, hated to look like a fool, which was precisely what they both looked like. They'd entered the caverns of Mt. Moon some two hours ago and Holiday, being the sort of guy that he was, had proceeded immediately into kicking over signposts and turning arrow indicators to get some cheap laughs. Of course, Doc chuckled alongside him, thinking they had been smart enough to go the correct way, after their mischief was complete. Now, hours later, they had hit a dead end, and he wasn't nearly so sure. He certainly was no longer laughing.

"Seriously, your gear's not working?" Doc asked for the second time.

Holiday paused in pushing his bike, and held the device up to show him all zero bars, for what was possibly the third time. "As a flashlight, maybe."

"So we're lost," Doc concluded, which Holiday felt was rather pointless, since that was rather self-evident.

"Uh. Yeah," Holiday affirmed for his partners benefit, deciding that he must've needed confirmation of the obvious.

"In a cave," Doc further noted.

Holiday didn't think idea needed any positive reinforcement. Instead, the relaxed admin folded his arms behind his head and looked up at the poorly lit rock strata as it flickered overhead and then back out towards Doc's Jolteon, which was making a show of its Flash by darting rapidly back and forth between the outcroppings of rock, to expose every cast shadow, and reveal its contents. There was nothing here, Holiday knew. Well, nothing but uppity trainers, anyways. He supposed that if one of those jumped out at you from the shadows, it meant just as much trouble as any Zubat or Geodude that you might meet otherwise. This cave saw too much foot-traffic to have anything really worrisome in it anyways.

"So what do we do?" Doc asked, with only the smallest hindsight given to hiding his frustration. Holiday, who was a natural at seeing just how pissed off people were, having had much practice helping them there, stopped, kicked down the stand on the bicycle and took a seat in the best place he could find, which was sadly a nearby boulder. He would've sat on the bike, but honestly, he didn't think his junk could handle any more abuse. Mountain biking had proved harder than it'd initially seemed.

"I 'unno. Divining rod? Seriously, how the fuck should I know?" Holiday answered with a tone and frown that held none of the considerations that were given him. Truthfully, he did know, but he was an engineer, not a spelunker. If Doc had a series of laser range-finders, a clinometer and a geological compass lying around, a few hours ago would have been a great time to say so, because Holiday had about as much _innate_ sense of direction as a blind lemon. "What, are you afraid of caves, too?" he asked.

Doc sighed and rubbed his neck, before quietly ordering Jolteon to take up a stationary watch, and taking a seat of his own. "Yea, maybe the idea that there are a million tons of rock over my head has me a little nervous."

Holiday looked up. It was fortunate that it was so dark at his end of the cavern, otherwise Doc might've spotted the face he was making. He'd never thought stupidity could be contagious, but he felt a slightly claustrophobic twisting in his gut at the thought of what Doc had just said. He promptly smashed his features back into an expression of anger, and told the other admin off for it. "What are you, a girl, or somethin'?"

Doc rolled his eyes at him. "Alright, alright, fine," he conceded at last, realizing that any sort of planning was going to have to originate from him. "So we take a break," he began. "Then, I guess we turn around," he stated, pointing appraisingly in the direction they'd come from. "Keep taking left-hand turns if we run into any forks?" he finished, ending the sentence in a questioning way, hoping for some support.

Holiday only shrugged, squinted hard at his gear and got comfortable on his massive stone perch, having little better to do. He might not have had any satellite service out here, but the local service leader-boards for his Pokemon Pinball game still showed 'pikapal4life' sitting pretty at the top, and his high-score wasn't gonna beat itself. "Whatevs," he remarked, loading up the red table.

* * *

Ash smiled at the gleaming boulder badge pinned on the inside of his jacket. He hadn't thought to bring a badge case on this journey, so the old way seemed good enough. Letting his crimson jacket fall back to his chest, he favored his partner with the same smile. Pikachu, who was trotting easily alongside him, returned the grin.

Moods were high, for once. He'd left the company of Forrest and his family late in the evening, after being convinced to come to dinner (a task which proved to be not so difficult) and eating his fill of many hearty and filling foods that Lola and Flint had laid upon the overcrowded table, for dinner. He'd even gotten a full night's rest camping out in a nice little spot not too far from the beaten path on Route 2, and was well on his way to Mt. Moon thanks to his handy little nav application.

The best part, was that he'd bumped into three other trainers earlier on this morning, and made mince-meat out of two of them. The third one had been somewhat more difficult as his zeal had caused him to lead in with Psyduck. Against the other trainer's Charmander, it should have been an easy win, but the deranged water-fowl had proceeded to muck up the entire round by taking one Ember in the hindquarters, and then spending the next five minutes or so ignoring every command he gave, quacking up storm and running around in circles with his tail-feathers smoldering, while the fire-type finished him off with repeated scratch attacks. Ash had bounced back, with Pikachu and Snorlax, though, who had gone entirely unused up until that point and pulled out a pretty convincing win against the opposing trainer, in spite of the poor debut.

Novice trainers or not, Ash could appreciate the victories. It was good medicine, after a week of almost nothing productive and he felt himself glancing around in the hopes that another such battle would present itself. Even if it didn't, though, he was still in high spirits- even his _step_ felt much lighter today. He reached a hand down to Pikachu, bent his wrist sideways and held it palm open, seeking a low-five. The electric type obliged him with a laugh, and they continued on.

He was almost at the entrance of the underground passage that connected routes 3 and 4. While he had always heard about a huge system of tunnels and chambers going deep into the mountain, the largest and shortest of these was the one he was hoping to travel through, and as he remembered, it was rather well-lit and well indicated. He was almost positive that if there was even a remote possibility of becoming lost in Mt. Moon, he would have done it before.

He paused a moment and tilted his head back to look at the sun, bidding it farewell as he prepared to travel underground. It seemed to beam extra brightly between the clouds, just for him._ Yep,_ he thought, _things are looking up._

An hour and a half later, he was tripping over rocks in the darkness of an unlit tunnel, with little to no idea of where he was going. He slapped his gear against an empty palm and leered at the equally empty satellite reception indicator. "Crap."

He held it up in the dark, using its back-lit screen to look around. How had he gotten so off-track? This didn't even make sense! Pausing, he glanced down at Pikachu, who seemed to be looking back at him, incredulously.

"You're right. What am I _doing_?" he thought aloud. "Flash!"

The electric type lit the narrow corridor like a halogen, tail aglow with the light of static electricity, producing a sound not unlike a bug-zapper.

That was much better, he noted, casting his partner a look of appreciation. His stomach rumbled poignantly as he moved to continue on, reminding him that it had been a long while since breakfast. He and Pikachu popped a squat on the floor of the cave, and he dug in his backpack for two of the candy-bars, that he'd now come to regard as a punishment for his lack of foresight. He handed one to his buddy, before unraveling the wrapper on his own.

He stuck the half-exposed chocolate in his mouth and sighed through his nose. So much for that run of good luck he'd been having. Who knew how long it'd take him to work his way out of here.

His gear buzzed in his pocket. He chomped off a bit of chocolate and dug for it, flipping it open awkwardly with his thumb. Someone named 'ihatebidoof' had just beat his high-score on the red table by 1600 points. He popped his eyebrows as she swallowed. He'd honestly been hoping for another battle, but he'd wandered too far off course for any hope of crossing another trainer's path, yet again, so this would have to do. _We'll see about that_, he thought, swallowing hard before biting off his gloves and preparing his thumbs with a rapid series of stretches.

* * *

Riley shouldered his simple leather pack higher onto his shoulder. Even its sparse contents had become heavy with time. He'd long ago withdrawn his azure cloak and crushed his hat into the recesses of his traveling bag. His simple black attire nearly soaked with the perspiration of a long and arduous climb up the back side of Mt. Moon, where there was no trail nor track to follow, but he would continue all the same. He'd been on his trek for a week now; His goal being to seek out, and evaluate a prospective Aura Guardian. His master's voice rang in his head, as he pulled hard against the unyielding stone, climbing higher, to match his partners tireless pace.

"_Riley. You've come, as I asked."_

Riley had lifted his head, his hair and clothes then in more gentle repose, unsullied from his simple trip across the ocean, raising himself from the kowtow position. Lucario rose beside him, his snout bearing only a small smudge of dirt from where it'd contacted the floor between his paws.

Riley was a bearer of a legacy which held true responsibility to both the world and everything in it and provided the raw materials with which to fulfill that promise. The role that he and Lucario shared, was one of such rarity and importance that to say it was truly epic would have done it very little justice.

There was much he didn't understand about his role, but he did understand that it was required of him to be everywhere and everything, to everyone. If he was fulfilling his destiny as Aura Guardian, he had to be there every time he was needed, every time he was called upon. He had to succeed in his objectives every time, without seeking needless praise. There was no need to accept accolades for something that was its own reward, and nothing good would ever come of garnering their small order much undue attention. So it was not in his nature to say,_ "Of course." _Rhetorical questions, such as, _"Why wouldn't I?" _were likewise useless to him. He'd only nodded and placed his hands on his knees.

His master had known he would come. His most recent assignment, at the behest of the order had sent him far, all the way back to his homeland: a long, but rather uneventful journey. A week earlier he'd been called to return to the historical home of the Guardians themselves, to meet with the one from whom he'd learned to use his Aura. Rota was in the far north of Kanto, beyond Mt. Moon and well removed from the rest of civilization. Their presence here was known only to Queen Ilene. It was by her blessing that they walked the lower levels of these ancestral halls.

Even the deeper chambers of Cameran Palace were vast, and untouched by the breath of centuries, watched after well by its custodial monarchy. He imagined that Sir Aaron himself, the legendary Aura Guardian who had given his life in the ultimate act of compassion, had once stood just where his master stood, locked in pensive meditation. Sir Aaron was a figure he'd been told more than once since arriving there, that he was the spitting image of; a thought which pleased him greatly.

"_Have you felt it. The immensity of what is to come?" _he remembered.

He'd searched his heart. It was the first place an Aura Guardian would look for answers. He looked back on these months past, for anything that had felt, rather than seemed, unusual. The emotional response was a better indicator than intuition at times. He searched his deepest self, the part of his soul that drove him with impulse and feeling alone, and considered what he saw. He reached out to Lucario, through the connection they shared, and asked his partner to do the same.

"_We have."_

"_There is something ahead. Soon." _His master had spoken from the long shadows that filled the windowless, candle-lit chamber._ "I cannot see what it is. Only what it pertains to."_

"_Is it bad?" _he'd inquired, though it felt childish to ask so directly.

"_Nothing about the future is set to stone, Riley. It only poises," _came the cryptic reply, if only to chastise him. _"But you are wise to seek distinction," _his master had continued in praise. _"This is why I called you here."_

"_I will do anything you ask."_

"_Seek out Ash Ketchum."_

"_I've met Ash before,"_ he'd remarked at them mention of the name.

"_As have I,"_ his master acknowledged. When Riley met with Ash before, he had seemed to possess the gift in one form or another, but the way his master had spoken those three words stirred something in him. Whether it was fear or reverence or awe he did not know.

"_He is and has been at the center of a great many things. Him and those like him have existed since Pokemon and Human first walked this earth together. Ash is amongst a chosen few, older even than our sacred order. We could do far worse than to count him amongst us, but like all things, that remains uncertain. Whether we will stand together against the coming swell, or stand opposed, Riley...That may depend upon you."_

The young Aura Guardian hefted himself over the edge of the sheer cliff face, with one strong-fingered grasp and then two, muscles swelling and stretching with the effort. As he moved to raise his leg up, and overtake the precepice completely, he slipped, but was caught by two spined paws, that held him fast. He'd been in no real danger of falling, but he was thankful for not having to rebalance himself with his face and made sure that was known, with a tired grin.

The duo helped each other to a higher ledge, and sat to take a rest. Riley let out a gasp of exhaustion, and retrieved his canteen set from the pack, wiping his brow with his bicep as he rummaged around. He poured the detachable tin cup full and took a few drinks, passing it thereafter to his partner, to lap from to his hearts content, while he heaved another breath and reclined in the sunlight.

He'd gotten a message by Spearow yesterday that Ash had been spotted in Kanto by the Order's information network, and would be passing through the Mt. Moon region very shortly, by all due estimate. That was very fortunate, the way he saw it, since that made his job immensely easier, but at the same time, he was as of yet unsure how to approach such a delicate subject.

He knew that Ash had refused to join the Aura Guardians at least twice now, for the sake of his continued career as a Pokemon trainer, but he had also recently been made aware of some shortcomings in that regard. The possibility of having to resort to highlighting a persons personal failures did not sit just right with him, though. He preferred a more tacit approach and certainly one that was more sparing of pride. If Ash truly was of such illustrious pedigree, it would be no enormous profit to cause an affront.

He sat in consideration of it. Ash, the chosen one. Certainly there would have to be some solid indicators of that. He didn't know the full history behind this boy, admittedly, and while even the smallest wisp of the ability to manipulate or even read aura was something to be considered, to have crossed paths with someone like that and not realized immediately, was disconcerting to him. Especially with so much up in the air, about it.

His master's words echoed again in his mind: _"Whether we will stand together against the coming swell, or stand opposed..." _If that was uncertain, then what did that truly mean, speaking metaphysically? That a 'chosen one' was not selected for specifically ambivalent purposes? He knew, implicitly, that was the Guardian's purpose, so what about Ash? He supposed that in simplest terms, it did fit into the scheme of things being generally 'uncertain,' where the future was concerned. It wasn't a huge worry, anyways. He'd only spent just the shortest amount of time in Ash's company, but it was enough to see that there wasn't an ounce of harmful intent in him.

That said, what did concern him was that the matter had been rather definitively placed on his shoulders. It was for him to decide whether or not Ash belonged with the order. Specifically, to entreat him to do so, if he was able but unwilling, or otherwise. The whole issue was roiled in the sort of mysticism that usually escaped him. His role as a Guardian was generally limited to more hands on activities. He was, for the most part, blind to the macrocosm workings that interested his master and he accepted that with stoicism. Riley's was a more personal tasking. He had never been good at reading the world at large.

Taking the cup back from Lucario, he refilled it and drank deeply once more, patting his friend on the head as he tried to gather his strength for the last leg of their trip.

He wondered if Ash had an easier time making sense of his role in things, by choosing to remain blissfully ignorant of them. Though, perhaps, in the same way he did, the Chosen One just tried to focus on the here and now, and enjoy the simple things, rather than worry about his own mantle of imposed import.

* * *

"Aw yea! 5 million points! Eat it, _ihatebidoof_! " Ash howled suddenly, jumping from his seated position and flexing gratuitously in celebration.

Pikachu watched with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment as his trainer continued to verbally taunt an inanimate object and dance around, caught up in the moment. Ash seemed to realize what he was doing after a few moments, and reigned in his enthusiasm with a soft clearing of his throat. He snapped the gear shut, and stuffed it back in his pocket.

"Uh, maybe we should get going," he implied with a certain amount of awkwardness.

"Pikachu," his partner agreed, beratingly.

Ash rolled his eyes and glanced opportunistically in both directions. Behind was the way they had come and ahead was...well, he didn't know, exactly. To be fair, he didn't remember what was the other way, either, so it didn't seem like all that important of a decision. He pointed on ahead, and let Pikachu lead the way with his glowing tail.

Not far away, Holiday sat fuming on a giant boulder. His lip drew higher and higher into an ugly grimace. Holiday didn't explode as he watched his high-score get knocked aside in favor of one belonging to his faceless nemesis, though. Being more the skulking sort, he blew a long, and unenthusiastic raspberry, and tossed his gear off to the side. "This game cheats."

He tried to recline on the rock a bit, to achieve the maximum level of disinterest, but he found that he was unable too. If simply for the fact that he had the most peculiar sensation that he was losing his balance. He instead struggled to maintain an extremely nonchalant sitting position, as Doc called for him to get a move on.

He was making quite a fuss about it too.

"Alright, alright, shit." Holiday groaned. "I'm comin', chill out."

He palmed around a bit in the craggy darkness for his 'gear, and stopped when he felt something slightly wet.

"Huh." Was the only sound he could think of to make, as he glanced down, and found his gear and hand jammed into stony the eye-socket of a particularly enraged Golem. One that he just so happened to be sitting on. Wisely, he withdrew his hand, leaving the gear for dead as the toothy maw that accompanied it snapped in his direction. It's huge round body shifted underneath him, throwing him off-balance and to the ground, where he landed in a heap.

He felt Doc's arms hook under his shoulders and drag him away, as the Golem turned on its powerful hind-legs to identify its agitators, now blinking the circuit-board remains of his Pokegear from one swollen, red eye, and snarling viciously. He tried to motor his legs back underneath himself, to get back to his feet, but Doc was heaving him along too fast, so he just ended up flailing wildly and knocking them both down.

Jolteon leapt in between the two downed Nebulae and their rock-type attacker valiantly, but it was no match for the enormous Golem, physically or elementally. Doc shielded his eyes from the blinding yet pointless display of electricity and Holiday, wasting little time for anyone but himself, practically trampled him in an attempt to flee. A massive Earthquake attack shook the ground out from underneath him, though, and the last thing Doc heard before something hard hit him in the head, was his partners loud curse of pain.

The quake reverberations spread throughout the metamorphic stone that formed the chambers and passage ways, becoming lower in frequency but more intense as they went. Ash was lifted off the ground as the shock-wave passed him, and he reached out wildly to grab at the nearby wall and stabilize himself. He found, rather frighteningly, that it was no longer there to grab on to, and instead there was only endless depth.

The young trainer cried out in fear and did only what came naturally to him, as he plummeted; he reached for Pikachu in the air, and pulled the mouse into his chest, to protect it from what he felt was sure to be a sudden stop at the end of a lengthy fall. Curling his knees and chin defensively around his charge, Ash felt like he was falling forever in one perpetual, black second.

Above, Riley pulled in one last lungful of fresh, mountain air, and stood. He turned to look at Lucario, who had likewise made ready to continue their appointed quest and opened his mouth to speak in christening of such an act, but it was drowned away by a terrible rumbling sound, accompanied by a lurching feeling in his stomach. Both of the travelers were thrown to the ground and could do little but look on in abject shock as it began to crumble away beneath them, cracking like a stressed pane of glass.

Riley reached for Lucario's paw, and caught hold of it just as the ledge gave way, caving into the mountain itself and falling away beneath them, in repayment of the earlier favor. Together, they fell into the chasm.

Neither worried.

* * *

She'd gotten in the pool this morning to swim it off, something she'd always done when she felt guilty about something. The _last_ time had been when Lily and Violet had covered her entire bedroom in fake webbing, complete with little wiggling, rubber Ariados while she was asleep. Her retaliation had certainly been swift and severe. Unfortunately, it had also left the middle siblings in tears, while Daisy and her shared rather strong words about the fact that every stitch of clothing Violet and Lily owned, not already on their bodies, was now cut to ribbons and lying out in the driveway. Jeans, blouses, everything. She'd even gotten their underwear. While it had seemed like a good idea in the heat of the moment, it had afterwards seemed very stupid indeed.

Then, like now, she'd spent almost half the day in the practice pool, doing laps until she couldn't feel her limbs anymore, once she'd come to her senses. Sensing a similar wave of lethargy coming on, she took a break and rested at the edge of the pool where her gear and her belt lay folded beneath a towel. She gathered the corner of it and wiped her face off, tilted her head to either side, gently clearing them of water, then heaved her torso out of the pool and onto try land, to better facilitate catching her breath.

She just laid there for a while, half in, half out. She knew she had work to do, but it was hard to get her mind off of it.

_It wasn't my fault,_ she thought. _I really meant to lend him my Gyrados! _Better judgment would've reminded her that she'd never asked him to trade at all... _but still_, she complained to herself, _now he probably thinks I did this to him on purpose!_

When she felt her gear buzz in her hand, and regarded it with a miserable expression. Three missed calls. Three new voice-mails. All from Ash. And she knew exactly what they were about.

She let herself slide back into the water, said a foul word that rose to the surface as bubbles and tried in vain to clear her conscience. She didn't want to listen to it just yet. She still had a whole days training to get done. When she dragged her head back to the surface, whipping her wet hair back, she was rather more displeased to see her eldest sister.

"What do _you_ want?" Misty remarked unpleasantly toward her sibling, neither wanting nor needing another source of distress this early in her day. Daisy just blew a raspberry and took a seat next to where she clung to the edge, dropping her bare legs into the water. Misty noticed she was wearing her swimsuit.

"The invitational is coming up," Daisy mentioned, as if she were changing the subject entirely.

Misty rested her chin on her wrists, and sighed. "Yea, I know," she said, even though truthfully, it had slipped her mind.

The invitational was one of the larger charity events they put on, and they did it once a year. Her sisters had initially hoped it would attract the upper crust of league society, but it had never really panned out that way. Really, it was a good opportunity for the Gym to appeal to local business owners and city officials, and that was never a bad thing in her eyes. A little boring, but never a bad thing. What was good for the gym was good by her, after all.

"Have you seen the RSVP list yet?" Daisy asked leadingly, causing the youngest Waterflower to eyeball her scrutinizingly as she shook her head no. "Guess who's on it?"

Misty flattened her eyebrows. Knowing her sisters, it was probably someone really lame like Dr. Abby, that Marina girl on the cover of all their stupid coordinating magazines, or some other famous contest-winner that she couldn't care any less about. It was rather surprising then, when her sister actually said, "Champion Lance!"

She felt the corners of here eyes strain with the effort of widening to such an outrageous degree. "Really?" She half-asked, half-shrieked. "Since when? Why didn't anybody tell me?"

Misty had been making sure they sent invites to Indigo Plateau since the very first year they'd done the invitations, but never had the invitations been accepted, much less by the champ himself! Honestly, she had always hoped that her idol, Lorelei would show up one year, but hell, how could she complain? The Champ was unquestionably cool. Even her sisters thought so, and they only ever seemed to like frou-frou types with frilly clothes, and cutesy Pokemon. Really, it didn't get any more 'upper-crust' than Lance.

"Well, I tried to a few days ago, but you left outta here in such a hurry to go see your-"

"Ugh!" Misty groaned loudly, cutting over the top of her sister. "Don't even talk about that." She didn't need any more negative feelings to associate with her apparently not-so-clandestine meeting with Ash. She certainly didn't want to hear her sister use the 'b'-word again. Daisy just laughed, just like she always did, ignoring her baby sister's rage in a way that was just so annoying to the redhead.

"Me and your sisters need to use the training pool today, and practice our routine for the invitational. Is that alright?" Daisy asked, kicking her feet a bit in the pool.

With a long sigh, she pulled herself out of the water, and wrapped her towel around herself. "Knock yourself out," she said, glancing down at her gear. She was done in the pool anyways. Walking away, she put it to her ear, and listened to Ash's voice-message.

"Message from," began the automated voice-mail message, interrupted by Ash saying his name in a terse, angry way, just as she'd imagined. "sent yesterday, at 5:32 PM...Hey Misty. Just got your little 'surprise'... _Right in the middle of a battle with Forrest_."

She winced as she shouldered her way through the double-doors, into the adjoining locker room. _Great_, she thought, _just great._

"So guess what _happened_?" the message drawled, in the most hateful, sarcastic way, provoking Misty to cover her eyes, in shame.

_You lost because of me, and now you hate my guts, s_he imagined, bitterly congratulating herself for having such a bright idea as to 'trade' Pokemon, and kicking her best friend while he was down, however unintentional it might've been.

"Psyduck totally kicked butt!" Ash shouted in excitement, drawing an exasperated face-fault on her end, in response. "..._Luckily._" Ash noted, his tone once again becoming irritated as she laboriously picked herself back up.

"Anyways, I'll be making my way around to Cerulean in the next few days." He said, and she could her Pikachu talking in the background for a second. Then there was a rustling sound, which she guessed was Ash putting his palm up to the receiver. _"No way, If I tell her that, she'll know what I'm planning!"_ she could hear him say, in spite of his efforts to hide it. She felt her eyes roll heavily. He was such a numb-skull sometimes.

"Um, O-once I get there, we're gonna get this all sorted out!" he said, trying to return to his former tone of aggravation and cynicism. Oddly he finished with "Bye Misty!" which seemed totally out-of-place with what had otherwise seemed like a threat.

She snapped her gear shut and shook her head, trying to clear the moron from her thoughts. With a half-assed threat like that, her worries evaporated, and she put her mind to work on the task ahead. With her sisters using the pool, she would need to get in a full days training out on the Cape, and make some phone-calls to rally up some public interest in this invitational event. First, though, she wanted to see that RSVP list!

She didn't bother to check the rest of her in-box. If she had, she might've noticed that the most recent reminder wasn't for the voice-mail message she'd just heard, and that there were two more recent ones. One that was completely static due to very poor reception, and another that was mostly the same, save for the sound of falling rocks.

* * *

Sweeping, majestic threads of azure coalesced into a physical manifestation of what was needed. A shield, a protective bubble, to defend them. Projected from within, and surrounding them from all sides. The kinetic energy of heavy stones was nothing to the power of the heart; the energy known as Aura. They bounced away harmlessly, as if colliding with an object of even greater hardness, though the whirling blue that surrounded them was not a physical thing.

He watched Lucario as their aura-sphere carried them slowly to solid ground. His partner, like him, descended slowly, in quiet meditative repose. The bubble guided them to the solid floor some thirty meters below, depositing them as gently as if they'd stepped off an escalator, it's lower hemisphere sinking into the floor, so as to provide a continual dome of protection.

He was always quietly amazed at this power he was beholden to, even having learned to control it in such a way through training. For Lucario, it was like a second nature, something that had always been there, but he was one of the few humans capable of wielding it.

When the avalanche had subsided and the fallen rock settled, he shook himself free of his wonderment and closed his eyes. Both the young Aura Guardian and Lucario centered themselves, willing the ball of energy to expand, shunting away heavy stone as it went. The blue force pushed all the fallen detritus to the corners of the cavern in which they now resided, and then dissipated into thin air once it's task was complete. Not gone, but now returned from where it had come.

Riley let out a breath, and opened his eyes. There was only the pale white light from overhead now, the light of their aura now faded, but he could still see Lucario's eyes aglow not to far to his left, peering out into the darkness.

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Luca!" his Pokemon cried, pointing suddenly, at a silhouetted shape at the opposite end of the cavern. A prone figure. As they dashed up to give closer inspection, they could both see a Pikachu's tail bobbing steadily from the folds of a jacket.

Ash awoke to the sight of a distant white circle in the midst of what he thought might have been a night's sky, the spot being the moon overhead. But it wasn't. That much became clear when he tried to sit up, and everything felt so oppressively close. He grabbed his head, which pounded furiously in his hands. "What happened?"

"Pikapi!" Squealed his friend, the first to respond by favoring his face with a series of appreciative licks.

"Are you alright?" Came a voice from the dark, very nearby.

"I-I think so." He patted himself lightly, and found that aside from a really tender bruise on his hip and a splitting headache, he was alright. He squinted into the darkness, hoping to catch sight of the other person who was there. It was no use though. All he could make out was two fain points of blue light.

"Flash!" he cried when a hand reached out for him in the dark.

Riley reeled away from the sudden burst of light produced by Pikachu's luminous tail. Even having taken a blow to the head, Ash recognized the Aura Guardian instantly. He was a little harder to identify without his crazy old-timey hat, but it was a still a sure thing.

"Riley? What are _you _doing here?" the trainer shouted, which made his head throb aggravatingly.

"I could ask you the same thing!" Riley responded, blinking the spots out of his eyes as he held out a hand to block the light from hitting his sensitive retinas.

Ash wondered why people always wanted to ask the same questions he did, but thought they deserved to know first. He clamped his eyes shut as another wave of pain throbbed. "Was there some sort of cave-in?"

Riley wondered why people in emergencies always seemed to need to question the painfully obvious. "I think it's safe to say that." The Aura Guardian said, trying not to laugh. This was no laughing matter, after all.

"Well if you're alright, we should work on getting out of here." Riley said urgently. "We can save the formalities for later!"

"Which way?" Ash asked, bouncing gingerly to his feet.

"Any port in a storm!"

Riley and Lucario pushed ahead to the nearest exit they could see that was not clogged by fallen debris, and Ash fell in behind them, after pausing to rub his hip which began to sting badly. He withdrew his gear from his pocket, and nearly swore that he was digging it out of a deep imprint in his own skin. Two recent calls. "Musta fell on it," he murmured.

It looked undamaged, though, so he tried again. Nothing. No signal.

They had almost made it to the small gap in the wall, before an aftershock hit, and caused them all to miss a step. Riley managed to stay vertical, Lucario fell to all fours, but Ash had to avoid stomping on Pikachu's tail and fell to his knees. The tremors continued for several jarring seconds, leaving them stranded, as the stone did flip-flops underneath them.

Ash shouted in panic and gathered his partner up in his arms again, as section of the floor nearby almost as big as a car gave way, receding into blackness, plummeting down into the untold depths of Mt. Moon, likely never to be seen by human eyes again. What worried Riley more than that, however was the sound of cracking rocks overhead.

Just as the massive forms could be seen descending from the darkness overhead, sharp stalagmites and rough-shod rock in clusters as wide across as he was, Ash stared in wonder as a screen of blue light sprang to life and deflected them, guiding their lethal drop towards the newly-formed sink-hole, in much the same way a gutter would the rain. He looked for its source, and found Riley, as well as Lucario, leading the energy away.

Ash could only fumble with sounds in awe, as he struggled again to stand.

"Aura." Riley reminded him. "Remember?"

Aura. Ash nodded. Riley was an Aura Guardian. "Y-you've gotten really good at it!" the boy stammered.

"All things, with time and practice, Ash." Riley said, with a smile Ash could hardly see. The Aura Guardian considered dropping a reference, making a subtle implication, but he thought better of it. Now wasn't the time for it. "Let's go."

They made their way out of the chamber, and soon they were running neck and neck, Pikachu nimbly leading the way, and Lucario bringing up the rear with his keen low-light vision.

"Pika!" Pikachu warned, as they raced onward.

"There's a split up ahead!" Ash observed, taking note of Pikachu's indicating.

"Take a right. Always take a right!"

"Luca!"

There was another after-shock, and this time it caught Ash right in the middle of an elongated stride, leaving him in an exaggerated flying splits position. He didn't have time to think about how uncomfortable it was though, as Riley came skidding past him hand extended desperately. Ash reached for it, but missed. He could hear the closed-in corridor coming apart around them.

Having missed his opportunity, Riley nabbed up Pikachu and continued his dramatic slide, covering them both in a protective shell of Aura. "Lucario! Help Ash!"

No sooner had he said it, than Ash felt himself impelled backwards across the floor, as though being pulled by the collar of his jacket. A cobalt haze in his periphery told him that was not the case, though. Tons of dust and rock crashed to the floor where he'd just been, and kicked up a cloud so thick that it made him cough. When the rumbling finally died away, he stood and covered his face with his sleeve. The dust forced him to close his eyes, but here was no point in keeping them open anyways. If Pikachu's tail was still lit up, it wouldn't have penetrated the dust anyways.

"Pikachu! Riley!"

Somewhere, faintly, he could hear Riley call out, but he did not know what was said. "Hello! Answer me!"

Ash wandered forward, probing outward with his fingertips. He hit something solid much sooner than he expected to. Cracking an eyelid proved pointless. He reached in his pocket for his 'gear and put it out in front of him, turning on the back-light and sweeping it around in panic.

Rock. Piled all the way to the ceiling.

"Ash...Ash can you hear me?"

He heard the voice but only faintly. He put his ear to the stone. "Riley?"

"Are you okay?" The voice was slow and deliberate. He must've been yelling on the other side to be heard, but it was just barely audible on his end. He wondered just how much rock separated them.

"Yea!" he yelled back, taking stock of both himself, and appraising Riley's Pokemon who seemed fine. "We both are! What about you?"

"Us too. Pikachu is fine."

That was a relief. His heart had been in his throat there for a second.

"What now?" Ash shouted. "Won't it take you guys forever to move all this rock?"

"I'm not going to try. Too tightly packed. Might cause a bigger cave-in. We'll just have to try to find our own way out." His heart shot straight back into his esophagus.

"Take Lucario. He can protect you. He'll lead you back to me." Riley assured him, before he even had time to voice his concern.

He didn't feel all that reassured. Not because he didn't trust Lucario to help him. The hound had already saved his life, after all. He really just didn't like the notion that he would be separated from Pikachu.

"Guess I'll be taking the left after all!" he said, after a while, trying to boost his self-confidence with a joke.

"I'll take good care of Pikachu for you. Don't worry." Ash felt his eyes spring open, and though they were burned a bit by the dust, it did not dull the surprise of having his fears so easily read.

"Aura." Riley reminded again.

Right, Aura.

It was a blessing in disguise, he decided. finally. Pikachu could give him some light at least, and he did feel a little better knowing he was with Riley.

"Thanks!"

"See you outside."

"Pikapi!" he heard his buddy call from the other side of the rubble.

Ash placed his hand on the outcropping stone, and nodded. "Yea! You will!"

* * *

Doc came to at the sound of someone struggling, and a harsh tugging at his shirt. Past a large rock that obscured them, his Jolteon gleamed faintly, skittering about as it tried to evade a huge lurking shape in the shadows.

His head swam as he tried to look away, and focus on who was trying to drag him away. He saw Holiday grasping at him, face contorted in strain.

Noticing the look, Holiday let him go with a gasp. "Fuck," he whispered tersely. "You weigh a ton."

Doc couldn't adequately voice his surprise. Had Holiday actually dragged him back to safety? He had to say, he was a little shocked. Touched, actually. "T-thanks."

"Thanks my ass, I've been trying to roll you over for five minutes!" Holiday hissed. "Jolteon wouldn't leave with me, and you've got the only working flashlight!"

Doc frowned. Wishful thinking. With a groan, he rolled onto his side, and began checking himself over as Holiday dug through his inventory. He didn't seem all that bad. His ear was bleeding, it felt like, and he was pretty woozy, but that didn't amount to much in the scheme of things. He looked back out around the boulder at his Pokemon, taking in a sideways view of his Jolteon, as it weaved and dodged around telegraphed attack after telegraphed attack.

The Golem was immense, and had sheer physical strength on his side, but you just couldn't hit what you couldn't catch. He wondered, though, who would tire first. Jolteon looked as though he'd taken some hard hits early in the fight. It's Flash, which was usually painfully bright now flickered dimly like a yellowed bulb that needed replacing.

"We've gotta do something about thi-!" He yelled, as Holiday wrested the device from the inner compartment of his bag.

"Ssshhhh!" Holiday snapped, fumbling to slap a hand over his partner's mouth through the darkness, with wide eyes full of anger.

So sooner than he had spoken, though, they heard the Golem heave and roar in their direction. Jolteon mustered enough power for one full-strength electrical attack, which was as equally ineffectual as the one that had preceded it. The last valiant effort of an exhausted defender. The static light faded away to just a faint glimmer, and left them straining to see anything but gradients of rock.

"Cheese it!" Holiday yelled, with a shove, the proved only too timely, as sharp stone from the boulder that had hidden them cut the air between them. Doc didn't need to be told twice, and was on his feet and dashing away, as the Golem came crashing through the stone barricade like a speeding bus.

Holiday lit the flashlight and pointed it around wildly, trying to get a good spot on their attacker, then decided after doing so, and getting a good look for the first time at those teeth and claws, that he really didn't want to paint a bulls-eye on himself, and tossed it away. Unfortunately the beam spun to a stop, illuminating Doc as he recalled his Pokemon

Using his keen Parkour instinct, Doc hit the deck as Golem rolled towards him, taking advantage of a natural formation of stone on the floor, which Golem hit like a ramp, and flew into the wall, spilling gravel-sized chunks of rock from the ceiling. It would have made Holiday yelp with excitement, had those gravel-sized chunks not just filled in their one exit to the chamber!

"Great fucking job, Bro!" Holiday howled.

When Doc spun to see the result his heart sank. He turned and made a helpless expression at his partner.

"Well do _something_!"

Thinking quickly, Doc reached for his belt. "I've still got some of those Snap-em balls!"

"Snag-em!" Holiday corrected, trying to climb on top of an outcropping of rock for greater protection.

"Whatever! Is now really the time?" Doc snapped back, withdrawing one of the balls from his belt, and staring with apprehension into the dust-cloud emanating from the impact crater in the wall. A large spherical form darkened a section of it, as the Golem stepped back into the beam cast by the flashlight.

"Just catch it, bro!" Holiday shouted, vaulting Up and over the top of the ledge with the sort of speed and dexterity that he could only muster when he was in mortal peril.

Doc hurled the ball with perfect aim. It hit its mark, and the vastness of the rock-type was sucked into the poke ball with an electronic tone that indicated a successful initialization of the capture process.

The ball quivered, casting a wobbling ellipse on the wall, which Doc and Holiday watched it with white-knuckled intensity.

_Boff!_ Like an overheated pressure-cooker, it burst, spilling its enraged contents back into the chamber with them.

"It didn't work!" Doc hollered, leaping drastically to the side and tumbling to his feet, as Golem barreled toward him yet again.

"Well it's not like it's a fuckin' master-ball, is it? You're still gonna have to battle it!" Holiday shouted back, in as subdued a way as he could manage from his lofty vantage.

"Battle it? Did you see that thing? It's so pissed it can't even see straight- LITERALLY, thanks to you! Plus I don't even have any Pokemon strong against rock-type, since I switched out yesterday!" Doc said,

"How could you not have any fighting, ground, steel, water, grass _or_ ice Pokemon?" Holiday incredulously exhausted the list of possibilities.

"Well, I don't!" He looked down at his belt. Mightyena, Kadabra, Arkanine, Skorupi and his KO'd Jolteon. The only Pokemon he'd kept around was Ryhorn, and that proved to be a poor choice.

"What the hell am I supposed to do about it?"

"Don't you have a Sunkern or something?"

"I don't catch Pokemon, Doc, you know that!" Holiday protested.

"Seriously, is now REALLY the time?"

"Tch." Holiday muttered, and cast out a poke ball of his own. His Sunkern appeared long enough to be ran over and practically rolled flat.

"Kuuurn." The grass-type moaned pathetically, as it was withdrawn.

"Oh, wow, that went well!"

"Don't you have some sort of plan?" Doc complained.

"I did, but taking your flashlight and running didn't pan out!" Holiday groaned sarcastically. "I'm still working on plan B!"

* * *

Ash wound his way as quickly as he could through the tunnels, holding his gear out in front of him as a light-source. He was trying to be careful about where he stepped, now, having almost stepped into an open pit only just a few minutes in to their expedition. It was a source of untold relief when he rounded the corner and saw a distant speck of daylight.

Ash yelped in delight, but tempered himself. It wouldn't do to get or worse at this point, so he tried to keep himself from taking off at a run. He realized that he must've been speeding up though, because suddenly he felt alone, and turned to realize he'd left Lucario behind.

The canine Pokemon lingered behind, leering over his shoulder, his trot slow, and distracted. Ash wondered why. He tried to peer past Lucario into the cavernous nothing, but it was no use. The light from his gear wouldn't cast that far.

Neither was really paying attention, and gently, they bumped into one another, turning to regard the other, before glancing back. What was it?

It seemed like forever that they stood there, staring back into Mt. Moon, when their escape was only a few hundred meters away. What was it?

It didn't make any sense.

He strained all his senses, trying to see, trying to hear, smell if he could. But it wasn't that. It was something else.

"There's someone down there," he said quietly, turning to gauge Riley's Pokemon

"Lu?" Lucario asked appraisingly, not giving away much with his expression, but it was not enough to convince Ash he was mistaken.

"I don't hear anything," the trainer admitted. "but I...feel something."

"Luca."

Ash looked away from the Lucario, and back toward where they had come.

"You feel it too, right?"

* * *

Doc and Holiday were on their last leg, or at least, Doc was, being backed into a corner now by their tormentor. Holiday, still perched on his high vantage, swerved and weaved with each narrow dodge his friend made on the ground. So far he'd lost Arcanine, and even Ryhorn to a building Rollout attack, and Kadabra was on the ropes, it seemed like, lacking the speed of its predecessors, having instead to rely on protective moves, which were beginning to wane.

Doc felt his mouth hanging open. How much more energy did this thing have? He supposed that the adrenaline dump from having a sharp Pokegear busted up in your eye didn't just go away after a little while, but still, he felt like this had been going on all day! He placed his hands on his knees waiting for the next rush, tensing his legs to spring out of the way, whilst huffing desperately for dusty air.

It was probably a mixture of things that caused him to miss his que. Maybe that Golem's rolling approach sent it hurtling over the flashlight, crushing it and immediately plunging the entire chamber into darkness. Maybe it was Holiday's immediate scream of girlish terror, or perhaps, most distractingly, that the formerly clogged exit of the chamber exploded, covering everything in a momentary blue glow and high-speed shale.

Kadabra's protect held up to Golem's Tackle, but not the shower of gravel, and both ground-level combatants were pelted with golf-ball sized stones, which was enough to put the Psychic type down for the count, and leave Doc cradling his head in fear of a follow-up.

A flurry of motion went unseen. Holiday could only make out the smallest rectangle of white light darting to and fro, flanked by two small dots of indigo hue.

Golem, who had no need of light to aim his attacks, relying on a form of tremor-sense, aimed a series of Rock Throw attacks at the new combatants, which Ash had no ability to perceive or react to, beyond flinching away from the rushes of air made as rocks the size of his head hurled towards him. Fantastic sheets of the blue aura sprung from Lucario's outstretched paws, to intercept them, blocking some entirely, which shattered on impact with the luminous energy, and cleaving others in half cleanly to fly harmlessly to either side of his charge.

"Is anyone in here?" Ash cried, trying not to let the sense of very real danger force its way in. "Say something if you can hear me!"

"Who the fuck is that?" Holiday blurted.

"I have no idea!" Doc said with limited concern, stumbling in the dark, trying desperately to find safety.

Lucario, who could see quite well in the dark focused grimly on his opponent, narrowing his eyes in preparation for the battle to begin in earnest.

"Lu!" The Aura Pokemon remarked to his stand-in trainer.

"Go!" Ash shouted, and the fight was on.

A High-Jump Kick evidently caught the Golem off-guard, as Lucario flew through the air and landed the super-effective move just below the crux of the beast's serpentine head, and its bulbous body.

It let out a roar of anger, but Lucario quickly dragged it into Close Combat, dipping under the sweeps of its powerful arms, and weaving through colossal stomps of its muscular, turtle-like legs, beating the dust off its exposed rocky skin with powerful hooks and jabs.

Lucario's speed was among the more impressive of his innate abilities, and he took great pride in putting it to use as an Aura Guardian. An actual battle with another Pokemon was something of a rarity, and in spite of the dire circumstances, he was thankful for the opportunity.

Ash wished he could see how the battle was going, as he listened to the hard sounds of sinew against stone. Holiday continued to wonder what the hell was happening, while Doc tripped backwards over an outcropping rock, and landed on his behind.

The tide of battle shifted, with Lucario caught off guard by a strong Mega Punch he'd not expected his opponent to know, followed up by a very successful Stone Edge, which sent him sailing backwards. He managed to catch himself, but not before bumping into Ash, who had somehow gotten himself turned away from the fight, pointing his dimly-lit Pokegear around in a direction where there was only open cavern. In order to avoid being bowled over by the larger foe, and risking having the boy he'd been appointed to protect crushed by a ton of rock and muscle, he had to throw himself very quickly back into the mix.

A Brick Break, followed by another, stopped the coming Rollout in its tracks, but Lucario was losing his ground fast, as the Golem met him in a full force grapple, and pushed him back steadily. Fear did not play a part in Lucario's calling, so it was by pure will to succeed that he resorted to entreat the young trainer.

"Luu!" The Aura Pokemon grunted, holding against the vastly heavier opponent with every ounce of physical strength he could call upon. "Lucario!" If Ash really was attuned, if he really was this 'Chosen One', he would know exactly what to do.

Everything in the chamber lit up at once with the eerie blue light, as Lucario forced his aura out in all directions, bathing the whole area in workable light, and revealing the titanic struggle for all to see. Doc at last, scrambled to where he felt he was safe, behind a large stalagmite, but Ash, true to form, and expectation, spun in place, and ripped a poke ball from his belt.

Snorlax emerged onto the scene with an almost uncanny sense of what needed to be done. A weighty Body Slam attack knocked Golem away from Lucario with suddenness like that of two billiard balls colliding, and Ash's Pokemon went after more with fervor.

"Yea! Good Job!" Ash shouted. "Now, Ice Punch!"

Snorlax's gleaming fist bathed the cavern in its own lighter shade of blue, as it flickered brightly, charging its frosty fusillade. The Golem proved a tougher enemy than anyone had thought, though, when it met the attack head on, and bowled over an adversary that was ever heavier than it was with an entirely unforeseen attack, which Ash had never seen before, and could scarcely believe.

Golem tucked into what at first looked like a Rollout attack, then blunted rock spikes protruded from its craggy body, snatching such solid traction from the dirt, that Snorlax was knocked down and ran over with ease.

"Woah. Steamroller!" Doc cried in shock, reaching for a poke ball on his belt, desperate to get back into the fight.

The trainer from Pallet Town was not quite out of the fight yet, however, and neither was Snorlax. "Counter it!" Ash called to his Pokemon, just as Golem was traveling across him.

Snorlax rolled with the momentum, and used his powerful hind-paws to kick Golem along from underneath, effectively flipping him overhead. Lucario recovered from his desperate measure just in time to re-condense the ambient Aura that had lit the room into a single point, then hurled the Aura Sphere at their airborne enemy, plunging the chamber into total darkness once more.

It made a whistling sound as it shot through the open cavern, and the resultant impact was as loud as any rumbling Mt. Moon had produced today. The sheer force of the attack put everyone on their haunches, and propelled the Golem into the open archway through which they had come, with velocity.

Lucario, Ash, and eventually Snorlax, Doc and his newly released Mightyena made it to the scene, (the latters following the faint glow of Ash's Pokegear) to find that Golem was, amazingly, still conscious and struggling feebly in it's trapped state, snapping and clawing in exhausted rage.

"Why's it so mad?" Ash asked in concern, as another figure shuffled up beside them.

"Genius here jammed his Pokegear in its eye!" Doc gestured in the dim light.

Ash squinted. Sure enough he could make out the metal-green circuit-board, and even a little bit of blood, which made him feel rather more sympathetic than he had when it'd made a solid attempt at smashing all of them.

"Well, I guess we're gonna have to get close enough to take it ou-" Ash started, only to be interrupted by the new arrival.

"Who the hell is _we_?" Holiday remarked.

Ash rolled his eyes in the dark. Instead of arguing, he decided he'd just do it himself.

"Lucario! Can you use your aura to hold Golem still? Snorlax! Try and keep its legs off the ground! The last thing we need is another earthquake!" Ash commanded, approaching cautiously, as the two Pokemon effectively handled the tasks laid before them.

Bravely, he reached for the Golem's damaged eye and thought for a moment, that he was going to handily pull it off. When Golem's jaws lurched out further than he thought they'd go, he was only narrowly able flinch back in time to avoid having his fingertips bitten off.

He let out a sigh of anxiety, now somewhat sobered to the idea of a second attempt.

He was surprised when a large hand landed on his shoulder, and pried him a bit to the side. "I'll give it a shot."

He was amazed when Doc reached in with his off-hand, and then jerked it away to avoid the snapping maw, spinning inward, and circling his strong arm around Golem's extended neck at the perfect opening to do so, putting it in a very tidy headlock.

Ash didn't really know what to say. "That was...pretty good."

"You could sortof say it's my specialty."

Ash felt his eyebrows crinkle up. "Your specialty is putting wrestling moves on Pokemon?"

"Badass." Holiday remarked. "Why didn't I know about this, Doc?"

"No, no! I used to do Pokemon physical therapy. Y'know, to keep Pokemon from hurting themselves and stuff..." Doc said, his voice eventually fading in to dismissive mumbling.

"Pfft. Lame!" Holiday rescinded his former complement.

Ash just shook his head in bemusement, at the two. Who the heck were these guys?

"Mightyena!" Doc called. "Use Thief! And be careful about it, alright?"

With a yip, Mightyena cleared the distance in a bound, and sprang at its mark. Sharp teeth clasped just a corner of the crunched up Pokegear, and using its paws as leverage, the dark-type pushed away hard in another flying leap, prying away the majority of the sharp metal and plastic.

Ash could see that it wasn't painless, but that quick and sudden was probably the most humane way to do it. Doc held up another poke ball, and when no one protested, he chucked it at Golem and crossed his fingers.

The ball fell to the ground, leaving a large empty passage-way behind, and laid silent. Not too shabby, the Nebula thought, as he stooped to pick it up.

"_Finally_!" Holiday said, and wasted no time at all muscling past both of them, to sprint away.

Ash thought about warning him that it was dangerous, and that there were a lot of fallen rocks in the tunnel outside, but after hearing whoever it was fall flat on their face, he thought it best to keep the tip to himself, lest he seem like he'd planned it out that way.

"Good job, Snorlax." Ash said, turning in place to acknowledge the spectacular performance of the Pokemon who was only visible as a large round shape in the dim light cast by the 'gear.

"Laaax."

Ash felt himself smile in spite of their situation. "You too, Lucario. Nice moves!"

Lucario said nothing, but he could see the Aura Pokemon's two blue eyes curve in a friendly way.

"Let's get the heck out of here."

After collecting their new-found, fallen companion, they gradually made their way back to the corridor where they had been before, by following Lucario, whose sense of direction was without a doubt superior to Ash's. His 'gear finally gave up the ghost about halfway up, and they were forced to hold hands then, which Holiday thought was fairly gay, and made sure everyone knew so.

Lucario led, with Ash behind, clasping Doc by the wrist, who led his Pokemon by grasping its scruffy hair. In order to avoid having to touch another man's hand, Holiday held Mightyena's tail, and one of Snorlax's claws, in distaste. They were all very pleased to see the same distant pearl of light, their promise of a well-deserved an open sky above.

At Lucario's behest, they took the trip carefully, but quickly, and when Ash felt the sun shining on his face once more, he dropped his grasp and stood in total appreciation of it, taking in his first deep breath of fresh mountain air in hours.

Holiday moved to join him, but a powerful jerk on his jacket practically threw him onto his back. He wriggled himself free of Doc's sudden grasp, and righted himself. "What bro, did you forget something?" He asked sarcastically.

Doc just glared at him with wide eyes, shook his head no, pointed towards the trainer who'd as good as saved their skin, and receded into the darkness without comment. As Ash revolved to look at them, even as blurry as his vision was, Holiday instantly saw why.

It was the kid. Doc and Holiday stumbled back into the cave entrance, the former gently whistling for Mightyena to follow. It never happened, though. Both Nebulae failed to account for the massive Snorlax behind them, and were soon pushed into the light by the girthsome Pokemon.

The three fixed each other with iron gazes, and it seemed like all the sounds of the mountain were swallowed up by the sudden revelation

"It's you!" Ash cried, finally, seeing red. His hands gripped harshly at his sides, and the stitching of his leather gloves creaked with the effort. "I remember you guys," he screamed. "I knew I'd heard your voices somewhere!"

Doc and Holiday could only look back in surprise. Holiday felt himself gently slide his hand toward the back of his belt, where he kept his Shedinja. Doc impulsively looked between Ash and Mightyena, even though they were both already being flanked by Ash's massive Pokemon and were essentially no match for him as things stood.

"You're the guys who made FUN of me back at that Pokemon Center in Sunyshore!"

Holiday gingerly let his hand fall, and gulped in relief. "Uh. Yea..."

Doc let go of a breath he'd been holding in, as a preamble to fight or flight. "Busted."

As their worries dissipated, though, Ash's anger magnified. "You said I was a scrub!"

Doc opened his mouth, and then closed it, before thinking of something to say. "I guess we owe you an apology, right Holiday?"

"I guess, Yea. Sure." The taller Nebula offered in a way that was painfully insincere. "You're not a scrub, kid, jeeze," he murmured.

"Yea," Doc added. "You really pulled us out of the fire, there." When Ash did not look satisfied at that, he continued. "We owe you one."

Passively, Holiday added a "What he said."

Doc glanced down at his Poketch. "Ah, look at the time." He thrust his wrist rather conspicuously into Holiday's face, who pretended to look at it with a great amount of interest. Slowly they began to back away. Ash just looked at them with subdued confusion.

"Crap, He's not looking away, bro, what do we do?" Doc whispered.

"Don't worry. I got a plan." Holiday whispered back. "Let's do our usual thing, on three."

"Tactical retreat, got it. Okay. One," began Doc.

"Two,"

"Three."

Whipping their entire bodies back into the most exaggerated stances he thought he'd ever seen, both of his former antagonists pointed with gusto into the distance behind him, and yelled, "IS THAT A UFO?"

Ash blinked. And stared. For an awkwardly long time they held the pose, until their legs began to quake with the effort.

"He's still not looking away, bro!" he heard Doc whisper.

"Sssh! It's gonna work."

"No dude, I don't think he's buying it."

"Ssshhh!"

After a few seconds more, the awkwardness just became too much for Ash to take, and he had to look behind himself out of pure sympathy. He heard them scramble sloppily back into the open mouth of the cave, and tried not to look back, for posterity's sake, as their voices echoed out to him.

"Wait, why did we run back in here?"

"I forgot my bike!"

Those guys were seriously weird.

Ash let out a long, shaky breath, and suddenly felt his nerves catch up with him. Where had all that gumption come from so suddenly? The last time he'd seen those two, he had been scared to even make eye contact. Just now he'd told them off! He was still confused, but wasted no more thought about it when he heard the familiar sound of his partner calling him from the opposite side of the slope.

"Piiikaaapiii!"

Distantly, he could see Riley wave overhead, and Pikachu bounding alongside him. Whatever had held his feet inside Mt. Moon couldn't hold him back now. He practically threw himself down the embankment, and by the time he cleared this distance his legs were not powerful enough to slow his built-up inertia.

He and Pikachu collided midair, and rolled to a dusty stop, as he hugged his little friend desperately. Even though he'd only been separated from Pikachu for just a couple of hours, he was enormously relieved to see him safe. Since they had met, He and Pikachu had only been separated just a few times, and never could he remember a time where he'd been at ease without the little yellow mouse.

Pikachu was so happy to see him, that he accidentally discharged a jolt of static which probably would've knocked most people flat, the moment he leapt into his trainers arms. It left a prickling sensation in Ash's fingertips, and frazzled his hair, but aside from that, he couldn't be bothered to care.

Lucario likewise joined his own companion, though with somewhat less dramatics. Lucario and Riley were every bit as inseparable, to be certain. Lucario had been with Riley since he'd hatched from his egg as a Riolu, since even Riley himself had been very young, and had neither had ever wanted to be anywhere else. A simple pat and a smile and their greeting was done, the rest being very sincere, but simply unsaid.

"Told you you'd see me again!" Riley perked, when he heard Ash speak up, coming to his feet with great effort.

"Never a doubt in my mind." The Aura Guardian assured him.

"Lucario really watched my back in there," the trainer noted, with a gesture. "He's really strong."

"As are you. Don't make it out to seem as though you did nothing." Riley noted, tilting his head slightly when he noted Ash's confusion. "Lucario and I can share our thoughts and feelings, no matter how far away we are, Ash. I know what happened."

Ash blinked. "Aura?" he repeated dumbly.

Riley nodded, and Ash said no more. The trainer only looked down at Pikachu and smiled, guarding his thoughts.

"Do you know what it was, that stopped you, in that tunnel, Ash?" Riley asked.

Ash looked up and put his tongue to the inside of his lower lip. He shook his head no.

"There's a reason the Aura Guardians have always been interested in you, you know that, right?"

Hesitantly, Ash nodded. Twice before he'd been asked to join. To practice, and cultivate an ability to manipulate Aura.

"What you felt was the Aura those people and Pokemon were giving off. Their desperate feelings. Their fear, their anger. That's what you felt." Riley noted. "There are only just a few people in the whole world who could pick up on that, Ash."

Riley glanced to Lucario, and then back to the young trainer, who stood listening quietly. "You could learn a lot by joining the order," Riley implied. The Aura Guardian knew his had to be tentative, gentle. He hoped that would suffice.

"I, uh." Ash dragged his top row of teeth across his lip. He didn't want to say no to Riley, after everything he'd done, but he was on a mission here. It was just getting started, sure, but it was important to both him, and to his Pokemon that he carry it out.

"You're destined to do great things, Ash." Riley added, easily reading the apprehension in the young trainer.

It was pretty inspiring to hear, but maybe not in the way, the Guardian intended it to be. Nodding his head, Ash grinned. "I hope you're right," The trainer said seriously, "because right now, it's my destiny to win."

Riley crossed his arms over his chest, and smiled in spite of himself. If he could feel anything, he could feel the raw determination coming out of Ash's heart. It was a sad sort of determination, he was surprised to find, but then again, he'd heard what had happened. Ash was trying to get back on his feet, and had only just now gotten a leg up. It would have been unfair to ask him to stop now, and Riley could see that. He decided that he'd tried his best, and that this was not necessarily the end of their discussion, but that it would be best to let it drop. For the Guardian's sake, he did not want to upset Ash, or risk driving him away from a concept that he was obviously warming to.

"The Aura Guardians will always welcome you, Ash." Riley said serenely. His invitation did not have an expiration date, after all. As long as they existed, they would gladly accept the Chosen One into their ranks with open arms.

"Maybe someday." Ash said, and left it at that.

"Farewell, Ash." Riley finished with a soft chuckle, reaching into his pack and withdrawing his wide-brimmed hat. Giving it a few slaps against his thigh to ease the wrinkles, he sat it on his head, and gestured northward. "I hope we meet again. _Someday._"

Ash waved, watching the Aura Guardian's travel down the mountainside, and out of sight. "Bye, Riley! Bye, Lucario!" he yelled after them.

When he could see them no more, when the two blue and black specks blended into the landscape, he let out a long tired gust of wind, and looked down at Pikachu, who looked back similarly. Only then did they realize that their faces, clothes and fur were blackened with dust.

"What a crazy day." Ash remarked, digging for his handkerchief, to tend to his face.

"Pikachu," Pikachu agreed, making due with his paws.

Together, and out of danger for what felt like all day long, they fell back into the same positive mood they'd shared this morning. Though it was late afternoon, the sun was still up, and it still felt just as nice as it had this morning.

He was happy to find that even without his Pokegear it was easy to spot the entry to route 3 from such a high vantage: a narrow, winding strip of pavement, that stretched out into the distance, towards Cerulean City. They worked their way down, with plenty of daylight left, and looked at the trail-guide bulletin board at the start of the path. He tried to memorize the path in his head, reaching out to trace it with his finger.

"What do you think, Pikachu?" Ash asked, entertaining a thought.

"Pika?"

"Do you think we'd make good Aura Guardians?" Ash clarified. "We could be like super-heroes!" He tossed his hands out rapidly, pretending he was blasting Aura Spheres at unseen foes. Ninjas seemed appropriate. He made explosive sound effects as necessary.

"Pika pikachu pika," his partner chided.

Ash laughed. "Yea, you're probably right." He looked back to the board. "I guess it doesn't hurt to learn new stuff, though."

As he continued to try to commit their course to memory, he felt his eye drawn to something posted on the bulletin board.

A neon flier stapled there read:

"**THE SCIENCE OF BATTLE!**

**Improve your skills! Learn cutting-edge strategies! Develop new potential!**

**Join us this Wednesday on the Pokemon Tech campus, in Auditorium B for a battling clinic like none other! Listen as professors from around the world lecture on the simple secrets of competitive battling that could turn your game around! **

**Admission free to all students and registered guests!"**

Ash looked at the paper, and then glanced at Pikachu, in wonderment.

He gave the matter a few long moments of consideration. It would mean putting off his little reunion with Misty, and also that he would have to completely circuit Cerulean, then double back to it later. Honestly, he needed more time to plot out his revenge scheme, anyways. Plus, this sounded worthwhile, even though it wasn't really his style. The word 'lecture' didn't really put him at ease, but he couldn't help but be interested in "secrets that could turn his game around."

And hey, it was _free.

* * *

_

A/N: Here's hoping that the editing has improved a bit.. but I doubt it. Anyways, many thanks for reading and to everyone who's reviewed! I really appreciate it. Expect the next one sometime in the not so distant future.


	9. Chapter IX

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon

Chapter Summary: Ash gets in over his head with the Pokemon Tech Academia, and ends up biting off more than he can chew when he unknowingly speaks out against the much esteemed Steven Stone Grant winner.

A/N: This chapter blew up. It's easily twice the size of what I originally intended. But I'm very happy with it.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter IX**

"Pretty Girls Quiet, Mean Girls Riot"

Riley hung his head as he walked the deep, winding corridors of the keep. Cameran palace truly was a bastion for the Guardians, and so he felt he should not have been as troubled as he truly was. He needed a fortress for his heart, he realized, when the feeling of old stone beneath his shoes and hardened walls, brushed with his fingertips, did not ease his restlessness. He'd done what he felt to be right, wherein Ash was concerned. He'd let him go, without an argument, and returned empty-handed. And in that way, Ash Ketchum had become his first failure as a Guardian. When the Order had asked him to assist Professor Carolina, on Iron Island, he'd accomplished his mission with gusto. He'd sent Team Plasma packing and prevented the entire island from being destroyed. Countless times, it seemed, he'd carried out his master's bidding, and done it flawlessly.

He'd _never_ failed. Not until now.

He felt his heart sink and he turned to face Lucario, at the wooden doors that led to the lower chambers that Queen Ilene had allotted to them. He hoped that he would be able to draw some strength there, and he did. Lucario looked back at him with a drab smile, and nodded supportively.

"I've returned." he said quietly, after taking a moment to compose his thoughts.

A voice from behind them said, "Enter."

He pushed gently against the doors and stepped into the chamber, before closing it behind himself. The interior was dark, and obscured much in it's shadows. Which was good, he supposed, since that was how his master seemed to prefer it. Much like the order itself, he supposed. Supremely benevolent, but easily misunderstood; and so, guarded, in most things. Knocked again from his thought by a pang in his chest, Riley wondered if there was to be a reprimand. A dressing down. He supposed that there would not be, but he was uncertain. He'd never brought bad news back, before. He'd never heard of another Guardian being punished for failure, but then again, he only knew of just a few others, and he did not know what responsibilities they even held. Had other guardians ever failed?

"Riley," his master began softly, from a seated position, well across the room. A pause, then a subtle upturn of intonation. "Are you well?"

Riley didn't suppose that he was unwell, but he spoke honestly, as he sank likewise to his knees. "I'm bothered."

His master made a soft noise of inquiry, but did not speak for a time. He was reading. Searching Riley's Aura.

"Ash has chosen not to join the Guardians." his master said in gentle summary.

The Aura Guardian nodded. "I've failed you."

"...Failed?" Riley was surprised to hear the good humor in his master's voice. The young man faltered. He didn't know what to say to that. How was he supposed to respond? He looked up, to make some offering, to provide an excuse for returning without Ash Ketchum.

"I chose not to-"

"You chose not to push where there was no push called for," his master said for him. "You chose not to risk alienating him, by turning offer into request, or request into command."

He supposed that was why, and he supposed that it could not be put more succinctly. He'd chosen not to put pressure on Ash, in spite of the fact that his master had put so much weight on the issue, because he could understand, and deeply respected Ash for what he was trying to accomplish. Not many had the fortitude to pick themselves up again after their they crumbled to the foundations. Much of what Riley had found in Ash's heart was muddled, mixed up, and angry, but behind it all, the same burning will, the same smoldering desire to succeed was there, if faintly, and he didn't dare or desire to snuff it out.

"Yes." Riley said firmly, and with great resolve.

"Then your mission was a success, Riley." his master said, surprising him. "Even if Ash does not stand amongst us, he does not stand against us, either. If he knows that he can trust you not to dissuade him, then that is enough. Understand that you are the face of the Guardians, to him, Riley, and you have shown him a welcoming one. You already made it sound as though he is prepared to learn, and simply unwilling; This may change in time. If he knows to whom he should come when and if it does, you have done more to further our cause than I could've asked."

Riley, somehow, felt unsatisfied with that. "I could have brought him here, regardless," the young Aura Guardian said contrarily.

"To what end?" his master said dismissively, "You cannot teach mastery of Aura to a heart full of resentment and scorn."

Riley sighed. That was true. He could only imagine that Ash would outright despise him, if he'd have forced the trainer to return to Rota, and eventually despise the whole idea of learning to use his gift. Training with the order was no simple thing, either. He'd poured much blood sweat and tears into his own comprehension of it, and could not imagine having gone so far without a deep desire to.

He nodded acceptingly, and his master gave another sound of appraisal, then there was contemplative quiet, for a time.

"May I ask a question?" Riley spoke at last.

"Always," his master acknowledged.

"You said you had met Ash before."

"Indeed," his master said, shifting beneath his long brown cloak. "Years ago, at a place called New Island. I remember it well."

Riley though he heard another small laugh from his master, but he couldn't know for sure. "Though, I am not sure he would remember it."

* * *

Ash blinked.

He'd been listening. He'd definitely been listening this whole time. He'd been taking notes too, and been practically leering at the lecturing professor so hard that he expected his defense to fall sharply at any second! So why, then, he wondered, as they went on to explain what the second most important thing to understand about the nature of competitive battling, was there a doodle of himself and Pikachu standing on top of a pile of fallen, weeping trainers, with warlord-ish demeanor and in captions "None can stop them! They are too powerful!" instead of anything that might have given him the slightest clue as to what the first thing had been?

He sat back and tossed his pencil down, stretching out his legs, though he remained mindful not to upset his backpack wherein Pikachu was napping, presumably out of sheer boredom. He tried to clear his mind. He needed to focus. He rubbed his eyes and resumed staring. He watched the lecturer's lips move up and down and watched him point his indicator at figures on the display, but nothing seemed to come of it. Why was this so hard? His mood was really beginning to take a dive.

E.V.s, I.V.s, These big equations that only seemed to mean anything if you knew how to multiply letters together, apparently, and something called STAB, which he was pretty sure just meant that moves that were the same type as the Pokemon using them, were stronger than moves that...weren't; which seemed sort of obvious to him, so either he didn't see the need for any of those long equations at all, or he was missing some key concept. He tapped the eraser into the paper, as he watched the lecture with what felt like rapt ignorance.

Until he felt a gentle poke on his shoulder.

When he turned slightly, trying not to break eye-contact for to long, under the strong suspicion that should he, he would resume his attention, only to find the Professor speaking a foreign language, though, he supposed, he may as well have been. It was the girl he'd sat next to. One he felt like he recognized. Or maybe she just had one of those faces. A pretty face. Even to Ash, who had very little interest in pretty faces, and typically even less interest in the people behind them, having very little time for girls with primary concern throughout his journey having always been Pokemon Mastery and the pursuit thereof, there was only a mild sensation of deja vu. He was, however, a teenage boy. And a teenage boy with hormones, however repressed they might have been, could see that she was very attractive, and knew it; furthermore, she seemed to be making every effort to accentuate it, and absolutely none to hide it. Ash knew from watching Brock for most of his journey, however, that pretty faces usually got people in trouble, and there was a chance to become a better trainer on the line here. One he did not intend to pass up.

"Hey!" She said whispered excitedly, a greeting he reflexively mimicked, whilst trying desperately to drag his eyes back across to the display without seeming as overtly deflecting as he felt. "H-hey."

"You're Ash Ketchum, right? Do you remember me?" She smiled when she was done with this and batted her eyelashes, something that filled Ash with horror, as he felt his face flush and his eyes backpedal across the expanse between the display and her prefect teeth and slightly dimpled cheeks.

"Uh..." He muttered under his breath, almost certain that he did, but wanting desperately to end this conversation before it got started. He pointed lamely at the presentation. "...Sorta busy right now, so..."

"This is pretty stuffy, huh?" She sounded agreeing, but Ash wasn't sure what he'd said to give her the sense he was disinterested. When he looked confused, she gave the smallest, calculated shrug. "It's me, Giselle, remember?"

Giselle. Yeah. That was her name. He remembered now. He set his hand on the edge of his desk, and opened his mouth to say something, casually. but then clamped it shut, and forced himself to look forward again, his heart beating fast. He'd almost gotten sucked in, for a second! It was like a 'cute girl singularity'! He furrowed his brow. "Yeah." He said, he hoped, with finality.

He put his hand up to his face, and tried to obscure her from view, hoping that eventually she would lose her patience and leave. And after a while, it seemed like she would. He'd almost worked the gibberish coming from the stage into a comprehensible form, when a piece of paper slipped under his arm. He looked down at it, and looked back up immediately, after seeing the swirly, gel-penned heart that dotted the 'I' in her name. He swallowed a hard lump in his throat.

_Calm down. Act casual. Don't want to get busted._

He sat back in his seat, and tried to slowly ease his face out of the mortified expression it'd assumed immediately upon assessing the situation. He stretched out a hand, and wiped the note off the desk, and into his lap with the palm of his hand. He struggled not to look over.

_Open it slowly. Don't seem too interested._

He stuck his thumb into the fold and tried to pry the letter open one handed, then, finding that he couldn't without his arm shaking like a branch in the wind, let it dangle at his side, and gave it a good hard whip. It made a loud popping noise that drew attention from several people in front of him, who craned their necks to glare back at him, for breaking their concentration and he felt the blush he was trying to play off magnify.

_Smooth. Real smooth._

He laid the note back on the fold-out desk, before turning it over, to bear witness to to the message written in unpunctuated purple cursive, unnecessarily consuming the entirety of a quadruple-folded page for what fit into half a college rule.

**'i think ur cute'**

He nearly swore aloud, as his face lift up. What the heck was he supposed to say to that? Shakily, he took up his pencil, and wrote wiggly letters on the paper. He'd wasn't exactly sure what he'd expected, being that he had as much expertise on girls as he had on nuclear physics; not enough to even be worth making a joke about.

When he looked down, he found that he'd dragged out two words in heavy, dusty block print, markedly concluded in a period, and then embarrassingly clapped the paper into the single fold required to pass a note in confidence before thrusting it out at then end of an extended hand, without eye-contact.

She reached for it, but never made it. Another hand, gloved in white, was faster than hers, snatched the note away and folded it open in cooperation with another, displaying all the tenderness of clawed predators, preparing to enjoy the most tender vittles of their freshest kill.

There was a snort, then a laugh. A gasp for air, and then a shrill scream that degraded into peals of cackling. Nobody in the lecture-hall seemed to appreciate this very much, but he was certain that nobody hated it as much as he did.

Giselle didn't know who'd just taken her reply, but Ash did. He felt the hair on his neck raise, as he put two hands on the top of his head, and sank onto his arm-table in humiliation. It was those two weirdos, Doc and Holiday. A little inkling part of him had sort of hoped they'd have just fallen into a hole somewhere in Mt. Moon, never to bother him again. He certainly didn't want them here _now_.

"Move over." The interloper vaulted the row of seats, and shouldered Giselle out of his way, taking over her seat abruptly, and glancing down at his wrist. A gleaming pink and black device sat there, slightly larger than a Poketch.

"Whatsit say?" said a voice from two different locations. Doc's voice came through both the speaker on Holidays device, and from the opposite side of Ash, where Doc was actually sitting. The larger admin was staring down at his own matching device, albeit his was green.

Holiday rolled his eyes at the device, rather than turning to face his accomplice, irritated with constantly having to explain to his partner why things were funny, or what he was referencing. Quite confusingly, he exhausted a large amount of effort to capture an image of the piece paper in the devices camera, rather than spend the second and a half it would've taken to hand the paper over, and display his response.

'**That's cool.**' appeared backwards on Doc's Crosstranciever, mirrored by the camera. He raised both eyebrows, then lowered them, then raised them again. "I don't get it," he admitted, finally.

Holiday made a strangled, frustrated noise and then turned the paper over again, thrusting it atop his open palm into Giselle's face, sending her sprawling out into the aisle from where she was half-seated, half kneeling on the arm of his newly acquired seat, as he glared heavily at his partner. "You piss me the fuck off."

The both laughed aloud then, strangely enough. "I am so glad we bought these, bro." Holiday admitted to Doc's face in the Xtranciever.

"Me too, bro." Doc agreed after shutting his off,and finally acknowledging the physical presence of his partner, only a few feet away.

Ash covered his face with his hand, trying to shrink a little into his seat as everyone looked back towards them. Giselle, who was making an embarrassed dash from the lecture hall in an effort to avoid detection, was now the least of his worries. A few threatening glares and gestures from the duo that flanked him on either side seemed to dismiss the attention as quickly as it was garnered, however.

"What are you two doing here?" He whispered angrily, as they receded back into their own seats, and out of his encroached personal space.

"Same thing you are, kid." Holiday responded disdainfully, but then did a double-take, then cracked up a little. "To see the lecture, I mean. Not the picking up college sluts part."

"I wasn't-" Ash began, defensively, but was cut off with a chorus of shushing noises from the surrounding students. He began anew in a lower volume. "Why would you want to come see a battling lecture? You suck at battling!" The words were out of his mouth before he could shut himself up. He wondered what in the world made him think he knew that about someone he didn't recall having ever seen battle, but nobody spoke up to deny it, so he rolled with it. Doc's did have a laugh over it, though, which Holiday didn't seem to appreciate much.

"Pokemon Tech is our Alma Mater." Doc explained.

"Al...mama..." Ash blinked, and Holiday threw a hand over his face, producing another angry growl.

"We went-" Holiday raised an arm, as if to block a manifest blow formed by the shushes of those around them, their volume increased by impatience. Similarly to Ash, he began again at a more acceptable tone of voice. "We went to school here." He explained, irritatedly.

Ash wrinkled his nose. "So you guys just decided to come _hang out_ for the day..." he whispered. School seemed like the very last place he'd want to 'hang out', if it all came right down to it. "...and you thought_ I _was lame, because?"

"Well, mostly because you're here to see a lecture about phony-baloney crap that only means anything in computer simulations."

"You just said you were here for the same reason I am!"

"I said I was here to see a lecture." Holiday clarified. "And I am. Just not _this_ lame-ass lecture."

"Oh yeah? Well what sorta stupid lecture are you going to see?"

"Bam." Holiday slapped open a piece of paper before him, and Ash found that he recognized it as having been posted on the Route 3 bulletin board.

It read: "TECHNICAL MACHINE ENGINEERING EXPO

Listen to lectures, and see tech demos from the industry's top designers, including engineering staff from Silph Co., Devon Inc, The Poketch Company, and Battle International. "

"That's like, the lamest thing I've ever heard of." Ash said in distaste.

"Ah-ah-ah!" Holiday tutted, and reached under the bottom to indicate the final line on the flier.

"Presentation from 12-5."

"And?"

"Food and drinks to follow."

"That's right." Holiday folded the piece of paper back into his jacket, and smacked his hands together as if clearing dust from them. "Food and drinks to follow. They got that here?"

Ash didn't remember there being anything like that. "...No."

"I thought not." Holiday remarked. He heard the duo knuckle-bump over the row of seats, behind his head.

"Nice." Doc commented.

"Besides, that guy has his equation all messed up. Everybody knows Hidden Power is determined by A plus 2b plus 4c plus 8d plus 16e, plus 32f times 15 over 63." Holiday said with a wave of his hand.

Confused, Ash checked his notes. "Um. That's the equation for Initial Values."

Holiday squinted, but neither confirmed or denied his mistake after reclining again.

"How come you bought one of these and not some new glasses, bro?" Doc asked curiously, pointing to the Crosstransceiver on his wrist.

Holiday grimaced. "I didn't see any that I liked!"

After struggling furiously to regain his focus for many long minutes, Ash realized that it was a lost cause. At least with these two chit-chatting over his shoulder. Glancing down at his notes, It didn't much matter anyways. All he'd taken down during the last segment was part of type-table, and a picture of Pikachu shooting Aura Spheres at giant, menacing, anthropomorphic candy-bars.

He just wasn't cut out for this sort of thing.

Quickly gathering his things, he stood and brushed roughly past Holidays overextended knees, and exited the auditorium, hoping to leave the two annoyances behind before they made to follow him.

Doc did glance in their young charges direction as they left, suggestively, but Holiday shrugged it off, and shook his head. "Nah." He indicated his Xtransceiver instead. "Remember, I got the satellite lock on him. Still got a job to do here, anyways."

"Food and Drinks to follow?" Doc guessed.

"Something like that." Holiday acknowledged, reclining once more into his seat.

Meanwhile, Ash left the lecture hall in a huff. _What a wasted trip,_ he thought. He hadn't learned anything. _So much for game-changing secrets_, he thought, kicking at the cement path that ran the width and breadth of Pokemon Tech's enormous campus. It'd gotten even larger since he'd been here last, now comprised by nearly twenty different buildings that he could see. Kind of a strange thought. Everything, it seemed like, was getting bigger, changing. He let out a sigh.

Why couldn't _he_ change, a little?

He felt like he was stuck in a funk he was never going to get out of. He'd expected himself to bounce back somewhat after his victory over Forrest, but his enthusiasm had sort of fizzled out on the way here, inexplicably. He'd even beaten another trainer on the road between here and Mt. Moon in a full six on six with relative ease. Presumably, the fact that this whole excursion was a bust had something to do with it. Absently, he reached out to Pikachu, who had been roused by his hasty exit and sat perched on his shoulder, scratching behind his ear.

Caught in deep introspect, he was a little off guard when someone crossed his path, and snagged the edge of his sleeve to keep him from bypassing them.

"Ash?" a quiet male voice asked. "Ash Ketchum?"

Ash shook himself out of it, to regard the boy who'd caught his attention in earnest. He honestly had no idea who this was. A high bowl haircut, and school uniform seemed completely innocuous to him, so he just smiled a little to avoid seeming like a jerk.

He wasn't famous or anything, but people had seen his face on TV before, certainly. Masking a slight grimace, he thought that perhaps it was someone who wanted to talk to him about his performance in the Sinnoh League. He braced himself for the possibility, then nodded.

"Wow, it's been forever!" the young man noted, and gave his arm a slap. "It's me, Joe, remember?"

Ash stared blankly.

"You probably don't. It's been what, five years, now?" the boy continued. "You helped me out, way back then?" Joe said in a leading way, pointing over his shoulder as though he could literally point into the past.

Ash thought about it, bringing a gloved finger up to scratch at his chin. When Joe moved to open his mouth, and clarify, Ash brought his hand down with a slap.

"Oh, yeah! Joe!" He shouted. On his original journey he'd come out here to help Joe because he thought the young student was being bullied by his seniors. That was why he knew Giselle, too! He and Misty had both battled them, and changed their skewed perspective of Pokemon battles. He guessed that not too much had changed about the schools stance on competitive battling; thinking back on the three hours of lecture he'd just sat through, theory over practice still seemed par for the course. "But, I thought you left this place to start a Pokemon journey?"

Joe rubbed the back of his head, sucking wind through his teeth in embarrassment. "Ah, yeah. Parents caught wind of that one, and nipped it in the bud pretty quick," he admitted with good humor. "They paid a lot of money to get me in here, you know?"

When Ash frowned sharply, Joe waved his hands. "But it's not so bad, here. Things got a lot better after you beat Giselle, really! Plus, as a grad-student, I've actually had the chance to compete in the Indigo League, just the same as if I'd set out on a journey, so it all worked out in the end!" Joe said with excitement. "Plus my parents didn't cut me off, like they threatened to." he said with a smile.

Ash guessed he could understand that. He couldn't imagine his mother putting him into preparatory school, but he could see where Joe was coming from, regardless. "How did you do in the tournament?" Ash asked, trying to steer clear of the inevitable _"What have you been up to lately?"_ question he was sure was coming his way.

Joe shrugged "Not the greatest," he offered up modestly. "But I'm always eager to go and represent the school, so, I'm sure I'll be there with the rest of the battling team this ye-"

Ash looked up when Joe's voice faded away suddenly, and saw a look of depression that he hadn't expected at all. Before he could ask, though, it was gone.

"Well, at any rate, I'm sure I'll go back." Joe said surmisingly, his expression once again becoming even.

Ash nodded encouragingly, even though he was a little confused. "Good for you."

"So what have you been up to-"

"Hey, I bumped into Giselle earlier!" Ash practically shouted across his recent re-acquaintance.

Joe blinked. "Oh." Again, the young student's expression darkened. "She didn't do anything..." Tapping two index fingers together, Joe continued ambiguously. "Uh, weird, did she?"

Ash reeled, as his efforts to avoid recounting the tale of his failed venture to Sinnoh backfired in his face. Worse, he felt a flush come to his face. "Weird?" He gasped, "No, no." He pressed both hands outward, palm up in reassurance. "Nothing like that."

Joe's expression flattened. "She wrote you a note, didn't she?"

Ash grimaced, and looked around. "Uh...No?" he half-pleaded, with a desperate shrug.

"You're a terrible actor, Ash." Joe said, without reservation.

"Okay, _yes_," the pallet trainer admitted. "and it was totally weird."

Joe blew out a sigh. "Sorry about that." He said diplomatically. "There's a lot of stuff going on with the club right now, and she's under a lot of pressure. It's sort of making her act out."

Ash wasn't exactly sure how that had anything to do with her writing flirty notes, but he didn't put it out there for consideration. "What's sorta stuff?"

"It's a long story." Joe said dolefully. "I don't wanna waste a bunch of your time."

Ash smiled. "Seems like all we've got today is time to waste."

* * *

"No, that's fine." Dawn said with a smile. "I kind of like being the only girl."

They'd been discussing the matter of finding a third member for their traveling party for a while now. Brock looked down at the final name on his checklist, circled in thick black marker. Though he rather liked the idea as well, he had been a bit surprised when local prospects had been quickly eliminated, hours ago.

"Leona?"

"Can't. I already asked. Besides, she's got her parents' Hot Spring to look after."

"Zoey?"

"She's my rival! How am I supposed to travel with my own rival, Brock!"

"Kenny?"

"AWKWARD! What about some of the people you know, Brock?"

Thereafter, they'd gone through the exhaustive list of people that he and Ash had shared short excursions with, and after Dawn had leapt at the idea of traveling with another talented coordinator like herself, in May, they'd come to find that, while May herself was otherwise occupied, that her little brother Max had just gotten his trainer's license the day before yesterday. Once he'd hung up the videophone, he turned and looked at Dawn gaugingly. He was surprised to find her so receptive to the idea.

"Plus, I won't be the youngest anymore." she said in scarcely contained excitement. It was obvious that she liked that particular aspect of the proposed arrangement.

"Well," Brock considered, pursing his lips out in appreciation. "I guess that settles it."

* * *

"And up until just a few weeks ago, Giselle had been acting representative and president of both the Battling Club, and the Appeals club. But then out of nowhere this foreign exchange student shows up, reads off some school memorandum about how the the head representative of any acting club must yield to any and all objections made regarding their leadership, should it ever come into question, which, is totally crazy, because Giselle has always been really good for the club. I mean, she made top 4 in the Indigo League last year, and she's ranked in the top 1 percentile nationally. So, Giselle stood up to her, and when push came to shove, the new girl called for a faculty tribunal, saying that because Giselle was the leader of two different extra-curricular teams, she wasn't giving the Battling Club the attention required, and challenged Giselle to a battle right then and there."

Trying hard to absorb the deluge of information, Ash nodded absently for a moment. "And then what happened?"

"I don't know." Joe said with a frown. "I wasn't at the tribunal, but from what I heard, it didn't go well. Some of the other club members said it was pretty much a rout." He paused for a moment to glance over. "Giselle was the best trainer in the school, completely uncontested, and this new girl apparently beat her so bad that the faculty basically had no choice but to strip her of her title."

"So who's in charge now?"

"That's just it, this new girl is!"

"So she just took over the club?" Ash said with some incredulity.

"Yeah," Joe said. "And so far she's pressured almost every single person who had anything to do with the Appeals Club out of her club."

"Why?"

"Same reason, I guess." Joe sighed. "The problem is, that _most_ of the the people in the Battling Club are in the Appeals Club as well. It looks good on your resume, and most of the people who go here have plenty of free time to fill on their schedule. But since he's in charge now, there's not a whole lot we can do. The new rep won't even let Giselle come near the clubhouse!"

Ash felt his eyes widen. "She must be pretty upset." He still wasn't sure what that had to do with writing stupid, girly notes,

Joe blew out a long whistle. "Well, you know, that's the thing about Giselle," he said with a shrug. "She was top dog around here, and that's the way she liked it. And for the most part, that's how everyone else liked it too. So now she's doing anything and everything she can to claw her way back up, even if it means playing dirty, and it's not doing a lot to help her image as Appeal Club President."

"Like what?" Ash asked.

Joe rubbed the back of his head. "Well, like your note for example."

Ash felt even more confused now.

Joe let out a disgruntled noise. "Let me guess, it said something like **'I like you, do you like me?'**" He used air-quotes to great effect.

Ash kinked up his eyebrows, not really sure if he should admit such a thing. Including himself, four people already knew the disturbing contents of that note, and that was too many, as it was. He gave a hybrid shrug/nod to affirm.

"She gave the same note to three or four different veteran battlers, just like you, who came here for a battling clinic last week." Joe said, offhandedly. "When they responded, she told them to **'Meet me in the battling clubhouse'**, knowing that they would leap at the chance to battle the new head rep, and hopefully destroy her credibility." he flexed his fingers mid-air once more, for clarification.

Ash balked. Giselle wasn't coming on to him- She had been trying to_ use _him! He knew he should have been shocked, perhaps even hurt by the idea, but honestly, he felt a wave of relief wash over him. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to react outwardly, though, so he kept his expression even, when he saw Joe sizing him up. He figured he must've made the correct face, when Joe went on without comment.

"Well, it didn't work, obviously, but the blow-back from that sort of fell on my shoulders, once the new girl found out what was going on, since I'm the deputy president of the Appeals club." Joe groaned. "I said it was my plan, since Giselle made sure I was sworn to secrecy on the matter."

Ash felt his eyes widen, as Joe looked up at him very quickly with severity. "Which, by the way, so are you."

Under any other circumstance, Ash would've laughed. Joe had no idea how safe the secret truly was with him. He'd probably go to his grave before telling anyone about that letter. Doc, Holiday, and Joe already knew, and that made five people too many, if you included the people who'd written in it. He nodded his acceptance of the oath, with a comically raised hand.

Joe smiled a bit, remembering why he'd liked Ash's style in the first place, all those years ago. "Um, actually, do you think I could ask you a favor? You said you were free today, right?"

Ash shrugged. "Yeah, sure."

"Well, I mean, if it's not too much trouble for you, do you think that you could go have a look inside the Battling Clubhouse?"

"You mean like, snoop around?" Ash was baffled.

"No-no." Joe clarified. "Well, not exactly." Under Ash's withering gaze, he crumpled. Joe wouldn't be winning any awards for his acting, either. "Okay, sort of."

"I'm not sure..."

"Come on, Ash." Joe pleaded. "All I'm asking is for you to go in there, and look around. You don't have any obligations to the Appeals Club, so nobody's going to give you any trouble. It's between classes right now, so I doubt anybody's even seen you _talking_ to me."

Ash thought about it, uneasily. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of someone purposely segregating Battlers and Coordinators. He'd always felt like the two went hand in hand pretty well, after all. Traveling with May and Dawn had been a blast, and he was pretty certain that even though he'd done a handful of appeals himself, that it wasn't making him less of a trainer than he should've been. Granted, there was something that _was_, but he was fairly certain that dabbling in coordinating wasn't it. That said, he wasn't certain he wanted to get involved. It seemed he'd just narrowly avoided being set up, anyways. If everything Joe had told him was true, then this new girl's status as club president seemed legitimate enough, and anything they were going to try and do to stop it was just petty. Since her primary concern seemed to be that Giselle had been neglectful of the club and it's Pokemon, he couldn't even really commit to the idea that there was some greater injustice to Pokemon going on, either.

But still, Joe's pleading look was digging at him a little. He found he really couldn't, and didn't actually have any real reason to say no. All Joe was asking for was for him to go in, and have a look around, right? It's not like he'd have objected to the idea, as a trainer, to go where the trainers were. Plus, if she really had toppled the best battler in the school, this may very well have been the league-level opponent he was looking for. He glanced to Pikachu.

"Waddaya say?" He asked his partner.

"Pi!"

Turning back to Joe, he was surprised to find the schoolboy in a low bow, hands clasped together tightly. "Thank you! Thank you so much!"

Ash brushed his gratitude aside casually, and smiled. After being pointed in the right direction and parting ways with Joe, Ash eventually found his way to the far end of the campus, the matter complicated somewhat by the end of the class period, and a torrential flood of students from all directions.

The Battling Clubhouse was a large brick structure, much like all of the others that dotted the campus, and had only a few features that set it apart. The firs was the stylized check-mark and poke ball symbol usually used to denote gyms and other places where Pokemon trainers gathered. The second was that, like most places where Pokemon trainers gather, there was much evidence of battle. What Ash guessed was long scorch-mark on the wall had been painted over in brick-tone, and there was a section of roof that looked newer than the rest, it's predecessor evidently being the victim of some errant hyper-beam or similar.

He took a breath, feeling a well of intensity rise within him as Joe's words echoed in his mind.

"_Giselle was the best trainer in the school, completely uncontested, and this new girl apparently beat her so bad that the faculty basically had no choice but to strip her of her title."_

He wasn't the type to revel in someone else's defeat, but his mouth was practically watering at the prospect of such an intense opponent. He steeled himself as he put a gloved palm against the double doors and pushed himself through. He stepped confidently into the singular, large chamber of the clubhouse...

Which was empty.

Well, mostly empty. Only half the lights were on, but at the far end of the wood-floored and gymnasium-like room, there was a single figure, standing next to a single Pokemon They were quite far from him at this point, so he couldn't see exactly what they were doing, but it was obvious that they had turned to look at him.

"Hello?" He said, raising his voice, but it was lost in the high rafters, so he repeated himself louder. He saw the figure beckon him over. His feelings of aplomb disappearing rapidly, he followed the nonverbal command.

Was the clubhouse really empty? Joe had made it seem as though most of the kids in the school were in this club, and even if the matter of it's membership being greatly decreased held true, it seemed like this building could allow for nearly thirty some odd trainers to comfortably battle all at once, maybe more if they were careful. Did this have to do with the new rep?

As he strode closer, he took the person and Pokemon into greater consideration. The Pokemon, which needless to say controlled the greater portion of his interest, was a man-sized dragon which stood about a head taller than him. It was predominantly black, with yellowed plates on it's arms and tail, while it's claws and bizarre, axe-like head-crest were a vibrant crimson. He'd never seen it's like before, and that thrilled him to no end.

"Who are you?" said the person standing next to it, drawing his attention away.

The person was a she, sure enough, and stood at a somewhat similar height to what he now assumed was was her Pokemon. She wore mostly blue, in contrast to his red, and similarly, her hooded sweatshirt laid open, exposing a black t shirt. Her pale hair was scraggly and unkempt much like his own, but longer, falling well past her shoulders. What caught his attention most, was a large white eye-patch over her right eye, which he looked sharply away from, once he realized he'd been staring at it for a conspicuously long amount of time..

He blushed furiously, and scrambled his mind for something inoffensive to say. _Just answer her question_, he thought, _don't even mention it._

"I-" He stopped immediately, with a shake of his head. _Idiot._

"_We_," he restarted pointedly, "were just looking around. My name is Ash."

"Something I can do for you?" She said. Ash noticed that she had a rather thick accent, but he was terrible at placing them.

"Nothing really. I was just here for a battling clinic, and someone said that this was where all the strong battlers hang out." He half-lied.

He watched her expression, or at least half of it flatten out a bit. "Did those coordinators set you up to this?" she asked, putting him instantly on the defensive. Was he that bad of an actor, really? He'd forgotten that his excuse near-matched the set-up the other battlers had been put to.

Before he could speak to defend himself, she continued. "Coz I don't have time for anybody who spends so much time worrying about how everyone else sees them. If that's what you're here for, then take a hike. I've got training to do."

"Its really not like that," he said, reassuringly. "I'm just here to..." He grunted as he reached behind himself, and groped for his Pokedex in the outer pocked of his backpack. "check out the competition."

He pointed the rectangular device at the unknown Pokemon, and awaited with glee the appearance of information on the screen. Instead, he was treated to a blue-screen error, and Dexter's voice telling him that there had been **"No match found."**

"Ah, you need to update your National Dex." the girl drawled. "Makes sense you wouldn't have any data from Unova."

"Unova?" Ash blinked. Where was that at?

She rolled her eyes. "You Kantonese call it something different. E-shoe, or something." She over-pronounced, before reaching into her jeans pocket and pulling out her own Dex, which was the same teal color as her hoodie. She withdrew a thin black memory card and held it out to him, and he put it into his own, after fumbling for a bit.

Some system data scrawled across the screen, and then a progress bar slowly began filling. "Hey, thanks...uh?" He glanced up helplessly.

"Uranium."

For a second, Ash thought he'd misheard. He turned his head a little to see if that was the case. It wasn't. She repeated herself as plain as could be.

"That's..." He paused to think of the right word. Nothing came to mind that didn't seem outright offensive, so he concluded with: "Something." He glanced back down at his Pokedex. 8%.

Glancing back up, he felt like he was being punished for something. He didn't know exactly what to say. He couldn't very well point out her eye, nor could he draw any attention to her silly name. But it felt like thus far all he'd done was stare at her Pokemon and pay her no attention at all that wasn't glaringly negative. After a long minute of silence, where he felt very much like an intruder, he went with the lesser of two evils.

"How did you get a name like Uranium?"

He was surprised when she didn't glare or scowl at him. She didn't even seem so much uncomfortable about the mention of it, so much as speaking up. "Well, I guess it was sort of customary in my home town for everyone born in a certain year to have names that fit a theme. One year, I guess it was primary colors. Precious Metals. Gemstones, so on. As you can guess, it just sort of got more and more silly as time went on, what with having to come up with a new theme every year. Well, the year 'actinides' came around..."

"That's crazy." Ash thought aloud.

"Could've been worse. Could've been named Mendelevium...Or Berkelium. I'd have never lived that down." She said, betraying just a small smirk.

He smiled back. "Uranium is kind of cool." _Comparatively, anyways, _he added in his head.

She held up a gloved fist, and the curl of her bicep widened a bit. "Weapons Grade."

He laughed at that, before a loud pinging sound let him know that his download was complete. Awkwardly disengaging the card and returning it to her, careful not to drop it with his gloves so grievously impacting his minute dexterity, he pointed his Dex at the Pokemon with renewed excitement.

**"Haxorus, The Axe Jaw Pokemon: Though generally kind, they can be relentless when defending their territory. They challenge foes with tusks that will never dull, and are sharp enough to shear solid steal. Their bodies are covered in hard armor."**

"Piiika!" Pikachu offered respectfully, and Ash likewise nodded his agreement of the assessment.

"He's really cool." He indicated. And pretty docile it seemed, as most Dragon-types seemed aggressive towards trainers than weren't their own, in his experience. This one had pretty much let him and Pikachu walk right up to it, offering up only a relaxed stare in response.

"Yep." Uranium noted, satisfied by his childlike wonderment. "Haxorus and I go way back. Since he was a little egg. My first Pokemon. I take him with me wherever I go."

Ash felt his smile grow. He pointed a thumb at Pikachu, who gave a friendly wink. "Same here."

And just like that, it felt like the Donphan had left the room.

"What did you say your name was again?" She asked curiously, now extending her hand.

"Ash Ketchum." He held his own out, and connected it to hers with the clap of leather on leather.

"Well, Ash." Uranium drawled, giving it a healthy squeeze and shake before releasing it. "I'd like to say welcome to the Battling Club, but there's really not much battling going on at the moment."

"I can see that." Ash noted.

Uranium nodded slowly, and at nothing in particular, before shrugging. "Doesn't seem like anyone could be bothered to show up today." She waved dismissively. "It's just me here, but we're still getting our time in, right Haxorus?"

Her otherwise silent dragon Pokemon let out a bellow so strong he nearly jumped out of his skin. He grabbed at his chest, and at his shoulder to help Pikachu stay topside. With Uranium's new greeting, and her Pokemon having previously been so quiet, he'd forgotten how close he was standing. He let out a long breath.

"But either way, Welcome."

He nodded. "Yeah." He looked around. "Um, is there some reason why there's nobody..." he began, but then trailed off lamely as his eyes were drawn to a nearby window, and to a form therein, waving it's hands wildly to catch his attention.

Joe.

He felt his eyes bug out, and then quickly looked away, as he felt his ling of sight cross with Uranium's. Joe deftly vanished, only to reappear, when she looked back at him.

"You were saying?"

He struggled, as his focus split between decoding the message Joe was trying to relay to him, and what was being asked.

"Yeah, um, how come, theres..."

Joe held up one finger, and then made an exaggerated questioning gesture.

"No um..."

He was mouthing something, but ash couldn't quite make it out in his periphery. It looked like it might've been '_just her_' but he wasn't sure.

"People." He finished awkwardly, deciding it would be best to ignore him, for the time being, and concentrate on the situation. He turned back to find her expression had lost all of it's friendly qualities. She'd spotted him.

"Get out."

He closed his eyes ruefully. _Busted._

She had him by the sleeve then, leading him out. He didn't bother to protest. He already felt like enough of a child, without making pointless excuses, and he certainly didn't want to get that dragon-type involved, but he hadn't expected it to end up like this. What he'd expected even less, however, was for Joe to come barreling through the door to his rescue.

Joe huffed defiantly, and widened his stance as the double doors slapped back shut behind him. "Stop right there! Ash has just as much right to be here as anyone!"

"Oh, for Arceus' sake, when are you guys gonna give it a rest?" She said, shaking her head. "I already told you, Appeals Club members aren't allowed to train here anymore."

"_I'm not really an Appeals Club member._" Ash protested weakly, but it didn't seem like either party was interested.

"_I'm_ in charge here, now._ I make_ the rules." She gave Ash a rough shove, casting him out towards his perceived ally.

Joe looked like he was about ready to blow a gasket. Ash noticed once he'd come to a full stop. " FINE! I'll battle you for the position, then!

To Uranium, the idea seemed laughable. "Pfft. Yeah right."

"You can't deny me!" Joe roared. "I'm calling you out! Just like you called Giselle out, remember? Addendum five, paragraph seven of the extra-curricular code of conduct!"

There was a heavy quiet than lingered in the air. The sense of tension seemed palpable to Ash, who gulped in the silence.

"Fine." Uranium said at last, more irritated than angry, Ash noticed. "If you want to rumble, then step into my office." The Battle Club president pointed over her shoulder, back to the battle-square she'd just came from. Ash looked at the Haxorus, who'd obediently stayed put throughout the course of events, but then Uranium stepped into his field of vision. "_You_ need to leave."

"Are you sure about this?" Ash whispered, as he was ushered past his supposed comrade. "That Pokemon over there looks pretty tough."

"I got this." Joe whispered back, holding up six poke balls, clasped in two hands. "Giselle lent me her A-Ranked Pokemon. There's no way we can lose." He strode confidently forward.

"I'm taking back this Club House!" was the last Ash heard as the double doors slammed shut behind him.

* * *

"Misty." Lily sighed.

"Just got off the phone with the Cerulean City Department of Transportation. They agreed to our proposal to close the roads leading to the Cape, so we should have the entire pier to ourselves." The youngest of the Waterflowers said, wheeling her high-backed office chair to the opposite end of her desk, where she snagged a sheet of paper from the printer before it even hit the tray. She spun and whipped it into her sister's hands. "I need you to look over this refreshment list."

Violet took the list immediately from her younger's hands, and rolled her eyes. She scanned the list rapidly. "Opening with bruschetta and chardonnay. Typical Misty. Always with the French foods," Lily chided.

"Bruschetta is Italian." Misty said at once, without turning to regard the next sister in line.

"Same diff." Lily commented, and though Violet seemed to share the sentiment she said nothing.

"Besides the grilled lobster tail, it looks fine," the elder of the two said after scanning quickly down the list.

"What's wrong with lobster-tail?" Misty asked, hardly caring about the answer.

Lily made a face. "It's like... eating bugs."

Violet reached her fingertips out to make a scuttling motion across her baby sisters shoulder. "Yeah, like, big creepy bu-"

Misty shrugged her away, and revolved in her seat long enough to snatch the list back with a cold expression. "Thanks for that."

"But seriously, Misty." Violet implored.

Misty ignored her, continuing with her own dissemination. "Also, I still need to speak with the Park Services about sweeping the sands, at the cape. With the storm rolling in tonight, I'm worried that there might be a bunch of seaweed and junk washed up on shore."

"Won't that, like, take a lot of time? And money?" Lily postulated.

"Yeah, this event is supposed to make money, not cost it." Violet reminded.

"I'm not trying to _contract_ the Park Services." Misty said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm trying to get them to _sponsor_ the event."

It was a moment before her sisters put it together.

"So they'll do it pro bono." Violet surmised, following along.

_Don't strain yourselves, or anything,_ she thought with a well concealed smirk, moving to lift the phone, as she leafed through a stack of papers.

"Alright, that's great and all, but, Misty!" Lily complained, poking Misty's arm.

"What?" Misty said with a growl, finally ceasing her flurry of motion, and turning to face them completely.

"Daisy wants you." The middle sisters said in unison.

"Tell her I'm busy!"

Without missing a beat, though, her oldest sister stepped into the doorway, holding up a blue sheath dress. "I just need you to try this on," she explained, holding up the article. "I'm worried it isn't going to fit you anymore."

"Yeah, you're not the runt you used to be." Lily said in a way, that Misty assumed she meant to be complementary.

"Plus, I think I see some holiday weight, still hanging around." Violet commented with a prod to her side.

Misty made a miserable expression and rolled her head on her shoulders, before turning back to her desk, not caring for the runt comment one bit. She wasn't even going to dignify the weight thing with a response. "_Busy_."

"Lily. Violet." Daisy said simply, and then walked away without further comment.

"Wah!" Misty cried, as her middle sisters hooked her under the arms, and lifted her from the seat, before dragging her down the hall towards the dressing room like a manacled prisoner.

* * *

He hadn't seen any of the battle, but he'd heard a good portion of it and it hadn't sound very good at all. Ash felt much sympathy for Joe as came through the double-doors he to leave in defeat, but as he extended his hand, the schoolboy just brushed past him, eyes to the cement, and left. Ash though he could see tears.

Uranium coming through, just behind him, was the first to speak. "Neither you, nor that girl's Pokemon will ever be strong enough to win against us, so don't waste any more of my time." The Battle Club president crossed her arms defiantly, on the top step. "You won't show your face around here anymore, if you know what's good for you."

He could see Joe grind to a halt, not far away, and bring his hands to his face. He stood like that for a moment, and then dashed away. Ash didn't like that. Not at all. It was one thing to beat someone. It was something else to rub it in their face.

"What are you still doing here?" she demanded before he could even begin his rebuke, as he turned back.

Ash, ignoring her question, took a step up the stairway, to get a higher vantage. Nevermind that he wasn't a coordinator. "What was that all about?" he asked angrily. "You obviously already beat him, and he was leaving just like you asked! Why'd you have to come out here and rip into him like that?"

Uranium didn't back down. "Joe and his Club have been harassing me all week," she explained. "What was I supposed to do, invite him back inside for cookies and milk?"

"Well, I mean, It's just, Joe is an okay guy. He's just trying to help his friend!"

"Really?" Uranium drawled sarcastically. "So is that why he left you blowing in the wind, just so he could bust in here and challenge me?"

Ash felt his face scrunch up. The circumstances _were_ sort of dubious. But that wasn't the point! "You could at least be a little nicer." If her beef with the Appeals Club was that they didn't put enough effort into their training, talking down to them was not the way to yield improvement.

"It's not my job to encourage people, Ash. I fight. That's all I came here to do."

Ash shook his head. "I'm just saying, it seems like you've seriously got something against them. And their Pokemon, too, which is just...weird." He could see holding a grudge against a person for something they did. But for the most part, Pokemon were loyal to a fault, and did as they were asked by their trainers.

Uranium sighed. _"Do all you people talk this much? How do you tell people to shut up in Kantonese again?"_she muttered in her own language, which Ash didn't understand a bit of. He was blown away when she next opened her mouth, and spoke to him directly. "Ash, If a Pokemon isn't useful in a battle, then It's not useful. Same with a trainer."

Ash felt himself recoil from the idea as it was presented, finding himself unconsciously shaking his head in protest. He couldn't accept that. He'd never been able to. It was disturbing to him that he'd now bumped into so many who felt that way. Ash was a trainer, to the core. He'd accepted that a trainer's role was to pit Pokemon against Pokemon in a contest of strength, vitality, and spirit, from which there could only emerge one clear and dominant victor. What he could not accept, was that failing to be that victor due to lack of skill, or power made you an unacceptable challenger. Nor could he accept that there was something wrong with choosing not to compete in battles. Battle was a choice! If he accepted that being strong in a battle was the only way to be useful, to be valuable, then he would have to accept that a lot of the people who'd affected him the most profoundly were worthless and he could not do that. Was Dawn worthless? Had May been worthless? May had come withing a hair of defeating him outright in competition, before they'd parted company, so he knew that could not be true. Dawn had more strength of heart than any two trainers he could think of! He couldn't let her say that! If he let it go, it would be just as good as agreeing with her.

"Take that back!" He demanded, loudly.

Uranium's eye widened. "Excuse me?"

"You're wrong!" Ash insisted. "If you _really_ think that, then you really have no business being in charge of this club! I know coordinators that could wipe the floor with you!"

Uranium's jaw wiggled, as she tried to hold in a laugh. It was like she found the idea totally preposterous, which only made Ash angrier. "If you think I'm wrong, then prove it to me!"

"Fine, I will!" Ash shouted, his face turning red.

"Good." Uranium said, her smile becoming toothy, almost devilish, it seemed. "You, me, this afternoon, in the main Gymnasium." She pointed to the north end of campus. "One on one. My strongest, against your strongest. I'll make sure the whole school sees this. Maybe it'll finally shut you wimpy coordinators up for good."

Ash was pretty baffled when she turned and reentered the clubhouse, since he had really rather meant to continue the argument. But a quivering excitement replaced the anxiousness he felt. He was okay with the idea of battling, since he was getting bored with all this 'learning', and to be honest, the whole experience thus far had made him very uncomfortable. He wasn't sure he wanted to be the one to champion the Appeals club cause, and he still wasn't sure that Giselle and Joe's approach sat just right with him, but if it knocked Uranium, who he was now certain he did not like, down a peg or two, he was good with it. This battle wasn't about the club feud anymore, anyways.

This was about who was right.

"You ready for this?" He said with a powerful look at his partner.

"Pikapi, pii pika pikachu!"

He left the clubhouse feeling oddly at peace with his decision to battle Uranium, happy that while his half-attended lecture had not come with refreshments, his visitors pass did entitled him to free cafeteria lunch. By the time he made his way to the cafeteria and worked his way through the line, he was nearly moved to tears by the heaping pile of hamburgers on his tray. There was nothing like a good meal to get him pumped up. He had one juicy burger in each hand before the overwhelming sense of something amiss filled him.

"I forgot the ketchup," Ash realized, aloud.

"Pikapiii." Pikachu groaned, before reluctantly scampering away, back towards the lunch-line, to rectify the problem himself.

He looked back the the hamburgers in his grip, and smiled. He nearly had one in his mouth, before the same sense of wrongness crept up on him again. He creased his brow. Something just didn't feel right. Was he forgetting something else?

No, he realized. It was worse than that.

Two tall figures, one in pink, the other in green slid onto the bench opposite him, depositing trays of food. Docs was mostly greens and lean meat, while Holiday's much resembled his, except for it was comprised partly of cake.

"Sup?" Holiday said around a mouthful of icing.

"Yo."

Ash made a sour face, and said nothing, filling his mouth instead with hamburger. At least for a while. Eventually, just their presence became enough to irritate him into talking. "What do you guys want?"

Doc shrugged. "We're just kickin' it in the lunch-room."

"You got beef?" Holiday asked, swallowing hard.

_Yes_, he decided, _yes he did_. Though, he was thankful that at least they were talking to his face, and not to their wrists. "Can't you guys sit somewhere _else?_ Stop following me around!"

They ignored him, and continued eating, laughing between themselves.

"Aren't you guys supposed to be at your little seminar," he continued derisively, hoping that they would get the point. "I thought there was gonna be _food to follow_."

"Yeah," Doc crunched a mouthful of salad. "There is."

"To _follow." _Holiday said, trying to keep a mouthful of food behind his teeth, "Key word, there."

"I don't think Holiday can go more than an hour or so without eating." Doc whispered. "Much less five."

"Engineering makes me hungry."

"What doesn't?" Doc said again.

In reply, Holiday shoved a whole slice of cake into his craw, packing his cheeks. Doc laughed, and then so did he, crumbs flying everywhere. Ash scowled in revulsion. When Holiday had finally chewed up his confection, he turned to Ash. "So what about you? Why are _you _still here?"

"I'm supposed to battle the strongest trainer in the school." Ash said defiantly. He didn't say where and when because he didn't want them to show up. "An exchange student named Uranium."

"I think I heard of her," Doc commented, after a long second. "She's the girl who won the Steven Stone grant."

"What's that?" Ash asked around a mouthful of hamburger, trying to sound unimpressed.

"Only the most prestigious Battling Scholarship in the entire world. Over half a million trainers apply every year, and from those five-hundred thousand, only a hundred are hand-picked, to battle it out in a single-elimination tournament at Meteor Falls," Holiday said, as though it were commonplace knowledge.

"Yeah. And supposedly this girl is one of the best to ever win it," Doc said in wonderment. "Steven Stone himself said she was on the fast-track to Pokemon Mastery when she won the grant back in January." He paused to glance at Ash. "I'm surprised you didn't hear about it."

"I was in Sinnoh," the trainer deadpanned.

"Well... sounds like you're fucked." Holiday proffered cheerfully, but without too much interest, choosing instead to focus on polishing off the final component of his meal, a slice of pizza.

Doc scraped the last bit of coleslaw from a Styrofoam cup. "True that."

Ash sat in silence as the duo finished and departed, feeling like a dump-truck had just buried him. He barely even noticed Pikachu return from his expedition, paws laden with individual ketchup packets. He didn't even feel all that hungry anymore.

* * *

Kazuo strummed his fingers impatiently. Making an outgoing call to Holiday's new number was a chore. Any communication from Cipher Inc had to be encrypted after all, and Holiday's workaround for the Kanto national switchboard was not yet complete, so the process was still an arduous series of false double-ups, and rerouted connections. A hookup in Celadon, ported out to the Sevii islands, than linked via satellite over Hoenn, into Fuscia, then clustered in bits out to seven different telecommunication relays, for the final wireless connection.

A grainy, artifact-filled image of his chief engineer appeared on the desktop screen. He expanded the video-window with a gesture, and set the buffer time to 300ms. It cleared up considerably, but he was still not pleased with the results.

"Boss." Holiday noted.

"What can you tell me about the state of the competition?"

"Not a whole lot that we didn't already know," the administrator said with a bored temperament. ", Devon Inc is working on localizing the Volt Switch move, but they look like they're two months or more from putting out a working machine. The Poketch Company is just riding the gimmick train, and Battle International keeps repackaging the same fare from last year. Silph Co still doesn't have anything worth talking about, so I guess their new TM 96, Traumatize, was just a pipe-dream." Holiday was weaving his way through a packed assembly-hall, glancing this way and that at tech-demos and move presentations, having returned from his lunch-break.

"How unfortunate." Kazuo said, jeeringly.

"Yeah, it sounded like a pretty good idea. On paper at least. Realistically, a move like that could only ever hope to be 5% effective, though." Holidays said, lifting a TM diskette and inspecting it visually.

"And what of our endeavors?" The boss asked, returning to business.

"I've got the programming for TM 101, 106 and 113 at workable stages, now. I can forward the data to you as soon as I get the encryption sorted out on this thing." Holiday wiggled his wrist, causing his face to shake up and down on screen, as he wordlessly indicated the Xtransciever. "Speaking of which, I was wondering..."

Kazuo perked one brow to allow the question.

"What happened to the live test subjects we used for TM 105?"

"Steamroller?"

"That's the one."

"As with all our Lab Pokemon, we release them into the wild when their trials are complete." Kazuo said simply. "The rehab center is in a rural part of northern Kanto, I believe. Why?"

Holiday shrugged. "No reason." Inwardly, he scoffed. "Good to know Cipher is so environmentally conscious."

Kazuo ignored the poorly covered sarcasm.

"And what of Ash Ketchum? What efforts have been made to discourage his training?" Kazuo asked, bringing focus to the most important matter.

"Looks like the kid caught his own tit in a ringer." Holiday glanced over and shared a knowing glance with someone whom Kazuo assumed was Doc. "Doesn't look there's any way he's gonna come out of this without taking a big loss."

"Make sure of it."

Holiday smirked. "You got it, boss."

Kazuo placed both his arms on the table, as the connection closed, and the tabletop screen became an inert black surface once more. That was one of his two concerns dealt with. He hoped that the measures he'd enacted this morning would be sufficient to ease the other.

The entire complex below level B6 was now on high-security lock-down, ballistic concrete in the door-jambs, triple-algorythm access-codes at all junctions. Not even air was cycling between floors, due to Realgam tower's highly sophisticated design. It was not fear that had lead to this decision... but it was something close to it. He'd been relieved to awaken this morning, and find that his hearing had returned, and seemed to be unaffected in the long-term, but he had no intention of ever allowing it to happen again.

He'd not since been summoned for an audience with the specimen, but If it wanted to talk to him, it would do it from here.

The only connection left between the upper floors and the lower laboratory levels was a single, low-band transmission line that had been hard-wired into the readout display of the reaction chamber, and fed through as many different beak-points and electrical firewalls as the day to day operations could spare. No one but him was any wiser, anyways. The sub-level lab staff had been sacked months ago, when the specimen had first arrived from Sayda Island, and Holiday was the only remaining high-clearance tech on payroll. Much of the remaining research staff had been sent to various overseas subsidiaries for the time being.

The only person for ten thousand miles in any direction who knew it was here, was him.

* * *

It was only later that Ash came across Joe and his illustrious, if much maligned cohort, Giselle, feeling like their respective big mouth and wiles had gotten him in more trouble than he was going to be able to bail himself out of, even though truly, _he_ had been the one to cross the line from onlooker to participant, band-standing, as fate would have it, his upcoming match to what appeared to be much of the Appeals Club, in front of what Ash guessed was the club's Appeal hall; a much better appointed building, at least from a design standpoint than the Battle Club. Needless to say, neither they nor it did much to improve his opinion on the matter.

"Ash has a lot of battling experience under his belt!" he heard Joe shout. "He's been to five different leagues, collected thirty-six badges, placed highly in four regional tournaments, and won an Orange Islands Championship. Uranium is strong, but if there's anyone here who can beat her, and take back the Battle Club, then it's Ash."

"How do you know?" Came a murmur from the crowd, lent anonymity by it's size. There were at least fifty people in the Appeals Club present.

"Yeah, didn't he lose out big time, in the Sinnoh League just a few weeks ago?"

"I saw that. He lost to some researcher with _no_ experience."

Ash brought his hands up and clawed at the tangible irritation he felt at having the subject broached again. This was not what he needed before a match. Especially one as big as this. He tried to wade his way to the front without rudely shoving anyone, but eventually it got difficult to remain polite.

"Pikachu!" Ash cried, for help.

A strong zap sent two rather obstinate loiterers jittering in either direction, and with them, the crush parted, to allow him through.

"There he is!" Giselle whooped, hopping down off the highest step, and rushing toward him, to grab his arm. "Ash, thank you so much for helping us out!"

Ash was good and mad by the time she reached him, and he shrugged her away without so much as a smile, unphased by the proximity of her attractive body, or her honest-sounding words of appreciation. His embarrassment from before, now next to forgotten, he instead stormed to Joe and pushed the megaphone harshly downward, before eying the schoolboy contemptuously.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

Joe stammered, and Giselle came up from behind, evidently much perturbed by being ignored. "We're hyping the fight up," Giselle explained. "We're trying to rally support for you."

"I don't want support!" Ash snarled, turning to face her for the first time.

_More like you don't want everyone to see you lose,_ the voice of his inner doubt reminded him sharply. He angrily shook his head. What part of that didn't they get? He was going to get trounced in front of the whole school, and it was their fault!

He'd been spending the last forty-five minutes wandering around campus, hoping that eventually his confidence would come back to him, but it was no use. Every time he tried to think positive, his loss in the Sinnoh League flashed back to him, and he remembered the hard sinking feeling in his chest, like his heart was being flattened against a rock in his gut, until he wanted to scream. He felt miserable, and he couldn't shake the feeling of dread. He'd thought he was getting better. He'd thought everything was going to work itself out. It was someone had pulled the keystone out of him, and now he was quaking to fall apart, before he was even rebuilt.

He'd wanted to battle against Uranium from the jump, but now, every nagging doubt, every little uncertainty seemed like it was roughly dragging itself across a very tender wound, and these two were just going to make the inevitable that much worse! He'd gone into this with a grin on his face, and now he felt he was struggling not to hyperventilate as panic course through him.

He let his head sag, and sucked in a giant lungful of wind, before pushing in all back out slowly. It didn't make him feel any better, but it did chasten his anger a bit. Gingerly, he reached out and put his hand on Joe's shoulder.

"I'm gonna go out there, and do my best," he said resolutely, more to himself than to the young student. "But whatever happens, this dispute over the clubhouse is between you and Uranium," he explained, hoping they would understand what he was implying.

That he might lose. _That he was probably going to fail_. **That he was done for.**

They didn't. He guessed that he really shouldn't have been surprised.

"We believe in you, Ash." Joe said, grabbing his elbow supportively

"Yeah." Giselle said, with a pat to his back. "You can save our club."

The truth was, honestly, that he didn't really care about their club. He wasn't a coordinator, and had never claimed to be. He'd tried his hand at it a few times, but that was it. His interest was in battling, in training, because that's what he was. The fact that Uranium didn't want the two clubs to intermingle, that was, as much as it rubbed him the wrong way, was between Uranium, Giselle, and the school, not him. He didn't see how this battle, win or lose, would change anything. Or even prove something, as Uranium seemed to believe, except maybe for the fact that he was nowhere near the same caliber of trainer as her.

She had accolades; real accomplishments. and all he had was a handful of badges, and a bush-league trophy. If her word was so solid at this school to have stripped someone as perfectly capable as Joe claimed Giselle to be, of her status as Battle Club president, then he didn't see how this battle would affect anything. Or how, indeed, they believed he could win it.

He couldn't even beat a rookie trainer, with borrowed Pokemon

He couldn't even make four repeat trips to regional tournaments count for anything.

He couldn't even win all of those badges they were talking about; more than a few had been given to him for reasons other than victory in battle.

He was never going to get to the top, because he wasn't that good.

Why did they think he was so special? He'd lost more than he'd won.

And it was always going to be that way.

He found that as he looked at them, he couldn't drag any more words up out of this throat, but even if he could've, he wouldn't have known what to say.

So he hung his head. Then he walked away.

* * *

Deliah smiled as she came back inside. The weather was getting rather rainy lately, but she supposed that was to be suspected. It was April, now, after all. It was great for her garden, too, which was always a plus. She'd just finished up pruning the azaleas, when she'd heard the phone ring. She hurried now over to the writing desk, in the family room.

She pulled off her gloves, and answered the call. Before the picture came up, she heard a single word "Mom."

"Ash!" Deliah gasped. She was so unused to her son calling, being that it was a rarity in and of itself. He'd only ever called her a handful of times, and it was usually at her request; Ash was such an independent boy, after all. "What a surprise!"

"_Yeah_, mom." Ash asked, trying to manage past the deluge of affection as quickly as he could. He knew it would feel nice, but he needed real advice, not just to be coddled. It was no use.

"It's wonderful to hear from you, sweetie," Deliah noted, before adopting a disciplinary tone. "Have you been remembering to change your underwear?"

Ash's eyes bugged out, and he slammed both hands over the video-screen of his 'gear, in hopes of muffling his mother's voice, thankfully he'd picked a quiet spot on campus to make the call. "_Mom! I'm Fourteen!_" he groaned loudly.

"Fifteen next month! Don't think I've forgotten!" His mother reminded him. "My little baby is growing up so fa-"

He shook his head rapidly. "Mom, mom, please!"

It was then that Deliah could see the stricken look on his face. The same look of lethargy and self-defeat that she'd seen on his face only a few short weeks ago. It was a look, that honestly, she'd hoped she wouldn't see again. She scooted closer to the videophone, to show that he had her full attention. "What is it sweetheart? What's the matter?"

Ash gnawed on the corner of his mouth. He wondered if maybe he should've called Brock. But, surely his mom would have the experience required to at least give him some general advice, even if she didn't have a history of Pokemon battles to look back on. It wasn't that his mom had been his second pick, or anything, truthfully, he'd wanted nothing more than to hear her tell him what to do about it, and certainly calling on Brock seemed a little hypocritical at the moment, but now he was beginning to doubt.

Cooly, calmly, he tried to explain what was happening. How he'd been shoe-horned to getting involved, bit off more than he could chew, and how now he was being championed against long odds. By then end, he was trembling, and on the verge of tears, in spite of his intentions. Deliah could see so easily what was wrong, as he explained. How the situation had found the chinks in his slowly rebuilding armor. How it had taken him down with pinpricks, and shot strait for that sensitive heart of his. Her face was sympathetic, as he angrily rubbed at his nose, trying to keep it from running, beneath glassy eyes, that likewise threatened to spill.

Seeing him this way was terrible. She couldn't remember a time where he'd been so downtrodden. She'd seen him upset, sure. She remembered not so fondly all the times Ash had come home with angry, tear-filled eyes, after going at it with the the Professor's grandson. And she remembered just as well, all the times she'd cheered him up, by reminding him why it was _him _who was special. Why it was _him_ who was going to be something great, someday. Why _he_ had nothing to fear from anyone, and nothing to be ashamed of.

She hoped it would still work. Her baby was much older now, after all, and had seen so much? Would the wisdom of his mother still seem so flawless and god-like to him as it had in those days?

"Ash," She began thoughtfully. "Do you remember what I told you, on your very first day as a Pokemon trainer? Remember? When you called me then, from Viridian? Your Pikachu was at the Pokemon center."

"Um..." It was a long time ago, so she gave him the benefit of the doubt.

"Do you remember how impressed I was that you'd made it to Viridian City in a day?" she asked with a smile.

Ash didn't see what that had to do with anything, but he humored her. "Yes," he answered quietly.

"And do you remember what I told you, when you felt like you were a bad trainer, because your luck had turned south?"

"Yeah." She'd forbid him to punish himself by belittling his own efforts. She'd told him to maintain confidence, and that he could accomplish anything if he set his mind to it. It crept back into his mind as plain as day, and made his grimace turn into a miserable looking, sheepish smile.

"So then if you remember, then you shouldn't be so upset, honey."

"Just remember that I'm proud of you, Ash. So proud of you, I could bust. You should remember that your _father_ is proud of you, too. He's always ranting and raving about the last time he saw you compete on television when he calls me." She made a very grumpy looking face. "_Oh, did you see our son? He was brilliant! How come I couldn't be that good at his age?_" she orated in a gruff voice that was comedically unlike her own, and so comedically similar to his father's that he couldn't stop himself from laughing at her. "You should be proud of yourself for what you've accomplished, and realize that even when it doesn't set you apart, even when it doesn't distinguish you as the best, it still marks the miles, and it still stands for something. _You_ stand for something."

Ash felt his angry, displeased facade crumble into the misery he truly felt, and desperately, he tried not to lose the last bit of his composure.

But his mother smiled. "Tell me what you stand for, Ash. Tell me honestly."

Ash lost it. He couldn't help but let out a sob in the face of such honest appraisal. "I dunno," he warbled. He was all mixed up, emotionally. He couldn't be that critical right now.

"Yeah you do," she assured him. "C'mon Ash. What's in your heart? What do you stick to, when you're at the bottom? What did I always tell you when you were little?"

She knew he had to get that back, otherwise the bottom was soon to fall out of her poor son's barrel.

"One day," he said, as if drawing the words up out of a deep well. "If I work hard enough," a pause, and then he continued. "If...,"

"If you're _thankful _enough," she reminded him.

"If I'm thankful enough for what I have," he nodded, before going on. "If I try my best, each and every time."

"Then?" she prompted.

"Then eventually, I'll have no choice but to _be_ the best there is." he said, even though he wasn't sure if he really believed it. He wasn't sure he believed it, but sure enough, that was what he'd always tried to stand for. The ideas he'd always tried to carry with him, and though he hadn't repeated the mantra of his childhood in a very long time, he knew what came next.

"And don't be sad if that day isn't today." Deliah concluded, feeling that it was the most important part. "Because you'll always have tomorrow to try again."

Ash sighed, and gave Pikachu a forlorn stroke across his head. It was evidence enough to his mother that the 'trying again' part was what was getting to him. It must've felt like he'd been 'trying again' for a very long time. She attempted a new angle.

"It really seems like you picked a fight with this girl because you didn't like what she had to say about Pokemon Not because of what she did to this club," his mother insisted. "Isn't that right?"

He thought about it very briefly, and then nodded. That was true. He'd thought maybe she'd be a tough opponent, but really, what had forced his hand was what she'd said, and how much it had reminded him of...

"She sounds an awful lot like that Paul boy you were telling me about."

Ash felt a certain feeling slide over him. It wasn't hatred. Not exactly. There was a lot about him that Ash didn't like, to be honest, but it wasn't that he hated Paul. He was just...opposed. Morally. Paul valued strength above all else, which he supposed was not that unusual for a trainer. Truthfully, it was what Ash _desired _more than anything; to be a strong trainer, without equal. But it was not what he valued more than anything. There were aspects that were more important than just that, and he was willing to stake anything to prove it. Furthermore there were things he would NOT do in pursuit of it. Paul seemed to have little reservation in that respect.

Perhaps, he thought, that was what was biting him so deeply. He'd never gotten a chance to really prove Paul wrong. He'd never gotten the chance to prove that what he _stood for _was right_, _against someone who was honestly more his antithesis than any rival he'd ever known. He'd missed that chance, and was uncertain if they would ever meet again, as peers. Who knew how far Paul had made it in the tournament? It wouldn't have taken much to have made it farther than he had. Paul was barely interested in him as it was, and he didn't think that a large competitive gap such as the one he'd just recently fell prey to, was going to do much to change that.

Caught up in the idea that he was quickly becoming old news Ash was astounded at how seriously his mother regarded when he looked back, and she, in turn, knew that now was the time to get tough, from the look on his face. Because sometimes, love had to be that way. Someone needed to convince Ash to snap out of it, and if he couldn't do it by himself, then by Arceus, she would. "And if that's the case then, honey, I don't think you can afford to doubt yourself right now."

"You need to get a grip, Ash!" she demanded. "You need to take the fight to this girl, and remember that no matter how it turns out, that you fought for what you believed in!" She pounded a fist into her palm. "That you came with everything you've got, and if it wasn't good enough, then darn it, you'll come back with more the next time." She concluded.

Ash stared into the video-screen, and wiped his eyes. She was right, of course. The opportunity to prove himself against Paul, to prove that strength of heart beat out it's physical counterpart, was not really lost. It was right here in front of him. This victory against Uranium, if he could grab a hold of it, even just by the skin of his teeth, would be a landslide. And if he lost, he could still sleep well knowing that he'd stuck up for what he knew in his heart, even if it was to no avail. But neither was going to happen, if he didn't show up. He could scarcely fight with a heart that wasn't present, just the same as he couldn't believe in his chances, if he didn't believe in himself.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you, Ash?" Deliah asked, finally, when there was silence on the line, her voice softening considerably.

He nodded his acceptance, wordlessly.

"Then you know just what you need to do." She waved at him. "I love you, sweetie."

"Me too, mom." He likewise waved, and smiled.

When she was gone, he pressed his fingertips to his eyes, and took another deep breath, finding it somewhat more refreshing than those that had preceded it. He looked over at Pikachu, who had seemed somewhat inspired by his mother's words as well.

"Pikapi pika pika pikachu!"

"I know!" He waved his hands around uselessly, sniffing his running sinuses back under control. It really was like she always knew just what to say!

"Pika." his partner agreed.

Ash thought carefully about how he would move forward. He had to use every advantage he could find, if he was going to win. He still wasn't certain that he would, or even could, but he knew that he was going to try like hell. The obvious answer was to shoot for a type advantage, which he could only really get from two Pokemon he had. Glalie seemed the obvious choice, as Gible was a relatively unseasoned battler, not to mention using a Dragon-type would put him at an even disadvantage.

Then again, he thought, this was all just based on the assumption that Uranium intended to use her Haxorus at all. He figured it was fair to assume that, but he couldn't be certain. All he knew for sure was that she'd be using her strongest Pokemon Pikachu was his best friend, easily toppled most foes, and came in a relatively unassuming package. But likewise, he knew that because Uranium had seen Pikachu, and had heard him say that they'd been together since day one, that she would be expecting him to use the electric Pokemon, and plan accordingly. Uranium had said that the match-up would be one on one, her strongest versus his. He did have a lot of other very strong Pokemon, but he could only think of one that stood out as the strongest, in terms of sheer power.

* * *

The phone rang. Both of the junior researchers looked up. First at each-other, and then at the phone. Gary wasn't quite used to the work-flow here yet, being that he was originally a field researcher. Tracey nodded for him to pick it up. Gary stood and strode to the videophone.

"Oak Reservation Laboratory. Gary Oak speaking. How can I help you?" He said plainly, before the video-screen came to life.

It was Ash. "...I must've dialed the wrong extension. I wanted the other Oak. The _good _one," he said, with a mostly unenthused expression at the sight of the younger researcher. Tracey tried not to laugh, and so raised him sketchbook up very high, and let out a staggered breath. Gary didn't seem to notice, too preoccupied with the matter at hand.

"Har-har." Gary groaned. "The Professor isn't in at the moment. What do you want?" Tracey noted that that the young researcher started very professionally, but degraded quickly into the sort of unique, friendly antipathy the two pallet trainers seemed to share for one another.

"Nothing from you." Ash concluded, dismissively. "Can I talk to Tracey?"

Tracey, outside of the videophone camera's viewing angle, made a face.

"No." Gary said, with a smirk. "He's busy."

Ash huffed. "You're annoying."

Gary, however, brushed the comment aside. "How's that solo journey coming?"

The dark-haired trainer shrugged his shoulders. "Not so bad."

"Not so bad?" Gary said patronizingly. "You're not just saying that because it was my idea, are you?" His smirk widened immensely.

Similarly, Ash ignored this comment and snarled impatiently. "I need a Pokemon transferred."

Gary shrugged. "Sure, sure." He turned to face a console. "Whatcha need, Ashy boy?"

The dark-haired trainer grimaced at his nick-name. "I need Charizard transferred in, and...I guess Muk, transferred out."

"I'll put the request through to Liza," the young researcher began, typing out a sequence, before pausing. With a wicked grin, he let his index hover over the return key. "...Just as soon as you admit how great my idea was."

Ash rolled his eyes. "Get real."

"C'mon, you know you feel stronger already."

"Strong enough to whoop _you._"

"Hey, I can still hang with you, Ketchum! Don't think I've gotten weak just because I'm not a trainer anymore, now." Gary shot back, with humor.

Something unreadable crossed Ash's expression then, like he was considering something.

His mind floated back to the words that Uranium had said to him, words that now, rather than making him seethe, validated his invested confidence.

"I don't," he said simply, after what was to Gary just a moment of silence.

Gary made a marveled expression, obviously not having expected such a reply, but then shrugged acceptably in effort to look unshaken. It was good enough. Tapping the enter key, he made a dismissive gesture into the camera. "There you go, request is on it's way. I'll swap them out for you as soon as it goes through."

"Thanks," Ash remarked, giving a nod. "Alright, well, seeya."

"Oh hey, before you go-" Gary began, stopping him before he could hang up.

"What?"

"-You look stupid without a hat on." Gary said flatly, and abruptly ended the call on his end, chuckling as the screen cut to black.

Tracy shared the mild laugh with him. "He seemed to be doing a little better."

Gary nodded with a smile, before walking back to his workstation. Tracey shook his head at the bizarre relationship the two younger boys shared and got back to his work.

It was like they were born to love hating one another.

* * *

Ash sucked in a deep breath. He had the confidence to do this. Not only that, but he knew that he had the skills to compete. Even if he didn't win, he could come away with something. Here was where he would learn exactly what level he needed to compete at, to be able to hang with the best of the best. That was what he would take away from this. This is what was going to make his trip all the way out here worth it. Forget lectures. Forget studying. He knew none of that could compare to what he was about to learn. To what he was about to experience first hand. If Uranium really was as good as everyone said she was, then this was going to be one of his toughest battles yet: a true benchmark of how far he'd come, and more importantly, what he would yet need to achieve. He'd spent the last forty-five minutes telling himself this, so he hoped it had sunken in somewhere.

He stepped out of the locker-room and into the stadium. There were more people than he'd expected; the entirety of both clubs, it seemed, plus a good percentage of the school population. The visitors side of the gymnasium was filled to the brim, but he noticed that the home end of the arena was practically empty. A few faculty members, and a littering of students spread thinly across the upper decks.

He was surprised at first to hear the visitor's side cheer for him, but then he thought about it. He doubted that Uranium's ultimatum had made her immensely popular amongst the student body. He didn't waste his time acknowledging them. He'd already decided that this match was for him, and not for them. Whatever they decided to take away from it, he was here to compete against a strong opponent, and nothing else.

He walked steadily to the center of the battlefield, and met with his opponents, who stood tall, in spite of the poor showing, it seemed.

"I see you brought your Pikachu." She said, as though she'd predicted it.

Ash chose to say nothing, but did note that she was standing beside her Haxorus. And that she was dead wrong.

"This is your last chance to walk away."

That made him smile. He wondered if, perhaps he hadn't gotten a pep-talk from his mother, this is where he'd have bowed out. If he'd have jumped at the opportunity to escape with his ardor intact, at cost to his dignity. He shook his head. "I'm not going to back down. I said you were wrong, and I won't leave until I've had the chance to prove it to you."

She put her hands on her hips, and shrugged. "Well, at least you've got guts," she made an allowing gesture, as if telling him that he was free to take up his position in the battle-square any time he chose. "Your _Pokemon_ might be a little lacking, but at least you've got guts," she said as soon as he'd turned his back.

He'd come in here, determined not to let himself get rattled, but at that comment, Ash bit, and hard.

"What was that?" He shouted, wheeling backwards, and staring aggressively at the girl who was quickly becoming his arch-nemesis. The second he did, she smiled, and he knew he'd given her just what she wanted. He'd heard from Brock before that the some of the best trainers used psychological warfare. Intimidation, and subversion to force their opponent to make the moves they wanted. He tried to reign himself in. If she wanted to start a fight, he was gonna have to finish it. Rather than yelling, like he wanted to, he simply pointed. A single gloved finger leveled like a weapon at her face. "You know, I know a trainer just like you. Paul thinks Pokemon are only useful if they're strong, too. I'm gonna show you that it takes more than strength."

"Oh, yeah?" Uranium said with what seemed like genuine appreciation.

There was a long, disconcerting silence then.

"So, this Paul... he wouldn't happen to be the same Paul that just won the Sinnoh League tournament?"

The word landed harder than any weight yet had on his shoulders. _Won. _Paul had won. He felt his chest tighten up again. He figured his face must've matched it, because she laughed.

"I guess it _doesn't_ take more than strength."

She turned and began walking towards her end of the arena. Over the crowd he could hear her yell. "But that's not what this is about, Ash! To me, being strong isn't what makes a Pokemon useful! It's _wanting_ to be, that does."

When she reached her battle square, where wood floor turned to backed earth, she turned and mimicked his earlier pointing gesture with gusto. "I don't believe that coordinators and their Pokemon _want_ to be strong. What they want is to be special. And I don't give a _shit_ about that."

"So what have you got!" she screamed across to him, when he didn't answer, his mind caught up on other things. "What is it that you want, Ash?"

Ash was too busy trying to dig his heart out of the rock-quarry it seemed to have fallen into. He shook his head to clear away the thoughts that threatened to push their way in, and steal his momentum, yet again undoing the work he'd done.

Paul didn't matter right now. This wasn't about him, or what he could do, or what he'd accomplished. This was about him. This was about right now. He had to stay with this.

...But how could he?

If that was true, and he didn't really have any reason to doubt that it was, since he'd been avoiding the television in fear of just such a humiliating and demoralizing possibility, how was there anything left to argue? Wasn't this already pointless?

He was already proven wrong.

Inside his jacket, a buzzing caught him off guard. Normally he'd have ignored his 'gear at a time like this, but he was so distracted, he already had it out and open, before he realized, walking glumly back towards his starting position.

**New TXT Message: Mom**

"**Ash, I love you so much. Please don't be sad. Everything will get better, I know it! Just try and stay positive, and take it one step at a time, even if everything seems hopeless. The rest will take care of itself, you'll see! You can do anything if your heart is in it, honey, remember that."**

He felt his frown turn into a quivering smile at his mom's timely follow-up, and he gently replaced the gear in his pocket. He filled it's emptied place in his hands with Charizard's poke ball, detaching it with a click from his belt. His last-minute glance to Pikachu, was accompanied by his thumb grazing away a tear from the corner of his eye. "Let's do this for Mom, alright?"

His partner agreed enthusiastically. "Pii-ka!"

His mom was right. If he let all his problems weigh down his heart, then he would never come back from this. This win wouldn't equate to a win over Paul. If Paul was en route to be the new Champion, there was nothing he could do to stop him. If he won here, it would only prove he was right to the hundred some odd spectators who were watching.

...But what mattered, what really mattered, here and now, was proving it to himself.

If he could fight in this battle, win or lose, and walk away knowing he'd given it his best, because he was at his best, then that was all he needed to believe he was right. That heart was what mattered, that being friends with every Pokemon, was more important than training only strong Pokemon and segregating the weak.

It wouldn't mean a victory against Paul, but it would mean a victory for his ideals.

It still seemed unlikely. The whole damn world, it felt like, was trying to beat him down and leave him in the dust, but if he could just overcome this. If he could just persevere here, and continue on, unbroken...

Then he could still work hard every day.

He could still be thankful for what he had.

He could still try his best, each and every time.

Then, of course, he wouldn't have any choice but to be the best, eventually.

And if not...there was always tomorrow, right?

A grin, wavering, yet unrelenting crossed his face. The first legitimate smile of the day widened his features, as he said the words that would begin the match.

"What I want?" he asked quietly, before shouting back. "All I want is to battle! Charizard, I choose you!" he cried, hurling the poke ball into the center of the field.

The fire-lizard appeared in a burst of light that was quickly out-shined by his own fierce flame, casting an orange glow across the floor where even the powerful incandescent lighting was hard pressed to match it. The bestial roar added to his own feeling of certainty. Just seeing the dragon shoot out a gout of flame, and beat it's wings powerfully made him wonder why he'd ever doubted himself, or the outcome of this match.

Uranium's Haxorus still looked tough, but compared to Charizard, it didn't seem that tough at all. Every time he saw Charizard, he looked immensely stronger. For his battle against Noland and his Articuno in the Battle Frontier, Charizard had been completely overwhelming in spite of such a prestigious opponent, and he'd managed to put up an incredible fight against Brandon's Dusknoir as well.

He decided to start the match off strong. Splaying his hand wide open, he cast it towards their opponents with gusto. "DragonBreath!" The attack would be supper-effective if it hit, and was amongst Charizard's strongest moves.

Ash watched the lizard rear back his two-pronged head and inhale deeply, preparing to shoot the jet of purple flame that flickered between his maw of teeth at his opponent, with a stabilizing beat of his wings.

"Counter with Double Chop!" Uranium yelled in retaliation, and Ash was blown away by the speed with which the orders were carried out. The two attacks met at point blank, in spite of the distance that had previously separated them, the two sharp crests on Haxorus' head exacting a toll on Charizard's muzzle for the spray of violet fire that struck the axe-headed Pokemon squarely in the chest.

To Ash, the trade looked even, and he knew that with a Pokemon as powerful as Charizard, a draw was the same as a win, so he upped the ante. "Submission!" Ash yelled. "Pin it in place, and DragonBreath it over and over again!"

The fire-type's powerful arms lanced out, and wisely caught ahold of Haxorus at the bases of it's tusk-like head-crest seizing them with inexorable yelled out to him.

"Haxorus, Rock Tomb!"

The sharp spires of stone slammed through the floor, entrapping both combatants at such a close range. While Haxorus seemed mostly unphased the move was extra effective against the fire/flying type, who was doubly weak against rock type moves.

Ash had been concerned over this. He'd done a little brushing up on Haxorus' move-pool, and while Rock Tomb was not in it, he hadn't failed to account for an expanded move availability that TMs or breeding might've provided. He'd faced some unusual challenges in this regard before, and he was no novice battler.

Two pillars of rock had knocked Charizard's clawed arms high and forced the combatants apart, in spite of the fact that their proximity was somewhat assured by the move itself. Gaining the momentary advantage, Uranium and Haxorus made the next move.

"Outrage!"

At first, everyone assumed something had gone wrong. A collective gasp rolled through the audience at the sudden bright flash, not yet realizing that they were gasping in awe of the raw power Haxorus was able to put behind the attack. The sense of surprise it seemed, was shared by everyone, save two men who sat unnoticed, high in the home-side bleachers.

"Wow," said Doc, legitimately impressed. Outrage was an already powerful attack, made obscenely so by their tampering.

"Yeah, bro. X-Attack is some pretty crucial stuff." Holiday held up a small wafer-like tablet that was identical to the one Doc had snuck into the locker-room and fed to Uranium's Haxorus about a half-hour previously. It was stamped ambiguously with '6x' and had no other markings. "Especially this batch."

It was some of their leftover wares from their failed venture in Viridian. Super-potent as a matter of course. That was how the 'trap' worked after all. _Get 'em hooked with the good stuff, then you can sell em whatever you want, for whatever price you demand._

"I was worried I'd have trouble getting her Pokemon to eat it, but it was really pretty docile. She must be really good with dragon Pokemon," Doc noted. "Good thinking, holding on to some, by the way."

Holiday seemed unimpressed by his assertion. "Somebody's gotta be the brains of this operation," he muttered.

Doc ignored his comment. "Doesn't look like Ash's got a chance in hell, now."

Standing to leave, his partner smirked. "You say that like he ever did." He gestured towards the exit. "C'mon, we got one more thing to do before we get out of here."

Back on the field, Ash felt like he'd just watched a car explode unexpectedly in front of him, as the Rock Tomb became something of a Rock Furnace, with fifteen foot jets of flame shooting from it's craggy gaps so intensely and brightly that the flames appeared white, and made the gymnasium appear dark by comparison. The heat was enough to burn his face, and he was forced to flinch away, something he almost never did. Pikachu defensively threw the flat side of his tail over his trainer's face, and likewise hid.

Ash shuffled backwards in mixed horror and astonishment. If the attack didn't relent soon, he was almost certain his jacket would ignite. Outrage, though, did have a tendency to continue for some time, though, he knew, and this was certainly no exception. When it finally did however, his horror did not abate. The Rock Tomb had melted around the two dragon's like domed glass. He couldn't see within.

He felt like he was grasping for threads in the dark, now, as he reached out, in physical desperation for an answer.

"Charizard?"

He knew Charizard had to be hurt. How could he not be? Outrage was one of the strongest Dragon moves, and that was the most powerful Outrage he'd ever seen, if not the most powerful move period!

A roar of defiance told him that the powerful lizard was still up and at em.

"Break free with Steel Wing while Haxorus is dazed from the attack!" Ash yelled, and his Pokemon complied almost instantly, busting through the rock of the dome as though through the shell of an egg.

Ash tried not to spend time marveling at the beauty of what he saw. The interior surface of what had once been the Rock Tomb, super-heated by Haxorus' furious deluge, had crystallized, making it appear as though Charizard were erupting from a ten-foot diameter geode with a burst of spark and fire.

"Now, Fly!" Ash called when he finally snapped back to attention. With a powerful beat of his massive wingspan, Charizard obeyed the command, pushing himself away from the earth, and his shaken opponent. He could see that Charizard was weakened, and hurt considerably by his opponents attacks. A shiny set of burns across his scaly skin, and bruising from high-speed rocks were only the most obvious indicators.

He needed to stay away from Haxorus, and that much was obvious. Charizard was safe from Rock Tomb if he stayed off the ground, Ash was certain, but avoiding another ultra-powered Outrage attack would be down to keeping his distance, which was something he was as of yet uncertain he could convince Charizard to do.

Their relationship with one another had become much better since Charizard had gone to train at Charrific Valley. Since then, Ash had become rather more accomplished as a trainer, and was now seemingly of a skill-set and achievement level that Charizard regarded as more acceptable of his trainer. That, and Charizard himself had become somewhat less rash, through his own training.

Separately, it would have seemed that they had both become stronger, and learned a lot about their mistakes in the past, from lessons learned their time apart. That said, they both still had their failings, and he knew Charizard's quite well, even if he was still at odds with his own. Charizard was stubborn, and had an inability to walk away from any unsettled contest.

Ash almost broke into a grin. _That was why we always butted heads. We were exactly alike. ...Except for the fact that a disinterested glare, and a plume of fire-breath always seemed to trump the yelling and stamping of a ten-year old_, he reminded himself.

That said, Ash had very little doubt here, that if he ordered Charizard to do something the flying dragon regarded as cowardly, he would just as soon ignore him, and lead headfirst into his opponent, Outrage or no Outrage. He thought hard about how best to appeal to his Pokemon's sense of pride.

"He may be tough on the ground, but he's got nothing on us in the air!" Ash roared finally, "Show him why you rule the sky!"

It proved to be just the right thing to say, and he watched in open satisfaction as Charizard cut a fast loop and shot twin stream of fire from his nostrils in boast.

"Yeah, right!" Uranium yelled, cutting easily across his enthusiasm. "Like I'm gonna let that happen!"

Uranium was clearly no fool. She wasn't about to let him play his own game here, and he'd made no real attempt to hide his intentions. Ash wanted things to get more tactical. He wanted separation. In turn, it was only natural that she would try to keep up the pace, and close distance.

"Use Taunt!" she cried, and Ash cringed.

It was exactly what he was trying to avoid. If Haxorus could provoke Charizard enough to enrage him into closing the gap between them, and throwing away his aerial advantage, this match was as good as finished. So naturally, that was just what he was now up against. And there was surprisingly little he could think of to do about it.

"...H-Haxorus?"

Ash's expression faltered, as his eyes widened. What was going on? Haxorus looked more disengaged than he might've suspected at this point, but even with what would've been natural following an Outrage attack, the dragon-type's dizzied countenance had already gone well beyond what would've been normal. Was something wrong?

Of course, Ash thought. A regular Outrage often put it's user in an extremely disoriented state to compensate for the severe tax on the body that came with such an exhausting and lengthy attack. Her Pokemon's had been especially dedicated to it, and now was going to pay for it. He watched the now exhausted Pokemon stumble imprecisely, and nearly trip on a wayward rock as it tried to bring it's focus back front and center. Now was his chance! Charizard was ailing, but if they could end this now, if they could finish it here, that would mean nothing.

"Haxorus is shaken! Go for the knockout!" He roared, perhaps even louder than he'd meant to.

Charizard's primary wing brevis shifted only slightly, but the result was much like the minute motion of an aileron on an airplane. Airflow over the wind changed drastically, and the large predator jinked midair, tucking into a hard spiral. Charizard descended, raptor-like at his adversary, advancing with the clawed terminus of all four limbs spread wide. Uranium screamed for her Pokemon to snap out of it, but it was no use. Impact was brutally fast and hard, Charizard smashing into his foe at high velocity, and practically crushing the axe-horned dragon flat to the ground, before clenching him tight, and ripping him into the air.

Ash was so crucially aware of what would come next that it practically obviated the need to give the command, but he did anyways for the sake of those watching.

"Seismic Toss!"

It was one of Charizard's favorite moves. He would fly as high as his surroundings would allow, nose-dive at full speed, and spike his opponent into the ground to devastating effect.

Uranium tried to keep her cool, as she watched the fire-type carry her beloved Pokemon into the air. All she could do was call his name, as she tried to keep herself from scanning the croud for someone to punish for this.

She'd caught two guys snooping around in her locker-room earlier, but when it seemed like they hadn't done any real harm, she hadn't gone after them. Besides, had they started any bullshit, she was sure that Haxorus would've dealt with them. Now she wasn't so sure. They must've fed her Pokemon something to make him sick. They were working for the Appeals Club, no doubt. Unfortunately, she hadn't gotten a very good look at them either, so it wasn't going to do her any good anyways. She set her teeth together, and took a step forward, trying to keep her confidence intact, as she watched Ash's Pokemon begin it's descent. She could only watch on and desperately try to seem unworried, hoping her Pokemon could pull through in spite of the obvious foul-play. It all seemed hopeless, up until the very last second.

Ash was practically giddy as he watched the final stage of his Pokemon's finishing blow begin. He could hardly believe it! He was going to win. All of that worry, all of that doubt in himself and here he was practically icing his own victory cake. He could see Haxorus beginning to come to in Charizard's deadly clutch, but at this point it hardly seemed to matter. It was like poetry in motion, except that poetry was supposed to be pretty, and this wasn't. Charizard was going to drive the dragon-type into the ground like a rail-road spike! What could Haxorus possibly do to stop him?

"Reversal!"

Oh yeah. That.

Haxorus lanced out a powerful three clawed arm of his own, just a split second before he was hurled to the dirt, catching a hold of Charizard's burning tail. With a seemingly acrobatic heave, the pair of Pokemon switched places midair, Haxorus using the fire-type's momentum and it's own weight to great effect, slingshoting the fire-type around and past him towards the dirt. The impact was grievous, perhaps even more so than what had been expected, as Charizard hurtled into the ground, digging a furrow into it as he struck wing-first after trying in futility to right his course. Ash thought for just a moment that the fight might still go on until Haxorus landed on his Pokemon's back in a crushing-force body-drop. His Pokemon shot out one last jet of flame before collapsing utterly, while Haxorus shakily got to his feet. Ash felt crushed. Just like before, just like in Sinnoh, his hopes were snuffed out before they ever had a chance to grow. She'd somehow snatched him back from the edge of victory and topple him over the precipice of defeat.

How easy she'd made it look bothered him too. How much of that was difference in skill? That was what he'd intended to find out, but now he didn't know. He found himself wondering what factor luck played in it, and if that really even mattered. It had seemed so close after all. If Haxorus' confusion had lasted even just a few seconds longer, it would be Charizard rising triumphant from the dust-cloud and not Uranium's Pokemon So was it that her luck was exceptional? Or was it that he was cursed to live out this scene for the rest of his career; falling inches too short in a hard run race of miles. If so, what did that teach him? What had he learned? What had this oh so important battle taught him? That he could seemingly hold his own with the best of them, but when it got right down to it, if he wanted to come out on top, he would need to stop being Ash Ketchum, the unluckiest trainer alive.

No, he told himself hearing his mother's words in his head. He'd come out here and given his best and that was all he could really ask for. Yes, he'd lost, and yes, it had been rather quick, even with all things considered... but his mother was right. He did draw significant comfort from knowing that he'd defended his beliefs to the best of his ability.

He'd promised himself before he'd even entered the gymnasium, that he was never going to let another loss gouge him as deeply as the one in Sinnoh had. So he sucked in his breath, and tried his best to ignore how he felt as he returned Charizard and stepped quietly to the center of the field. He could hear the whole gym build to a roar of booing, and it was demoralizing to the extreme, but he had already made a promise, he decided. Who cared what they thought, anyways? He looked to Pikachu, who looked back at him sympathetically.

Ash pat his friend between the ears with a look of his own, curling his hand up over his shoulder to reach the top of Pikachu's head. He smiled a bit as his friend's appreciation for him, and from that was able to push the rest of the world away, if only briefly. This was a solo journey, right? There wasn't going to be anyone but his Pokemon here to cheer him up when there were bumps in the road. Nobody to check his ego when things were easy, either, so he figured this was good practice. And it was a good baseline, anyways. As long as he could still look at Pikachu, and as long as his best friends could look back at him, and they could both smile, no matter what had happened, he knew that everything would be alright.

He didn't like losing. And he definitely didn't like the idea of losing to this girl, but when they shared a small grin with each-other it felt like he could take almost anything in stride.

As Uranium left her battling square, she thought good and hard about the mess it would make for her if she just accused Giselle's new flunky of cheating outright. It was one to embarrass himself in front of the whole school by helping the Appeals Club president challenge her authority, but trying to poison her Pokemon was something else all together. Something that would mean definite expulsion if she was correct. But still, if she wasn't, it would throw the whole match into speculation, and likely do more harm than good. As it stood, she'd beaten the coordinators at an unfair fight and Haxorus didn't seem any worse for the wear. She looked her starter over with a dedicated eye, once she'd closed to the center of the field. Ash was there, but she didn't bother to pay him any attention, until she was confident that all was right.

And it seemed to be. Turning with some uncertainty towards her challenger, Uranium crossed her arms. Deciding that she would let him speak first, she continued to say nothing.

To say that Ash was flattened and doing his best to keep a straight face as he thanked Uranium for the chance to battle her, would've been no small understatement. He felt like he was knuckling under, but he did his best to tell her honestly, what he thought, without being rude. "I'm still not sure how I got mixed up in all of this..." he bobbed his head, after working up the gumption, "but I'm really glad I got the chance to battle against you." He had already decided that he didn't much care for her opinions in the field, but he could certainly acknowledge that she was a strong opponent, and at least worthy of his respect in that regard. "You're..."

Had the effort to push a complement out of his mouth been a physical effort, he was sure he'd have broke into a sweat. "...very talented."

Uranium sighed. She was wrong. She decided that while the ploy to sicken her Pokemon for the battle had almost certainly been an Appeals Club ploy, Ash almost certainly had nothing to do with it. She sort of hated it when she saw the good in people. So much of her thrived on clash and competition, after all.

"I guess you weren't awful, for a coordinator," she admitted, careful to temper her own recognition with an insult.

It was his turn to sigh as he explained again that he was not a coordinator. She nodded acceptingly, as the booing built to crescendo. She guessed that made sense. Maybe his story really was legit, after all. Certainly, stupider things had happened today.

"Your Charizard knows some pretty interesting moves. I can tell he's had good training," she offered, in lieu of apology.

Of course the complement unintentionally backhanded him, since he's wasn't the one who had been training Charizard for the past two years. Originally, Charizard would hardly even listen to him. He shook it off, though and accepted the compliment on his Pokemon's behalf, if nothing else.

As if with a great deal of reverence, she withdrew a red and black ball from the pocket of her teal hoodie and pointed it at her Pokemon It was a Cherish Ball, Ash could see. She spoke a compliment in her native language, before returning her Haxorus to it. As she put it away again, she faced him again.

"Listen, if you're not a coordinator, it's still cool if you come around and train at the clubhouse," the Battle Club president offered.

He nodded respectfully and tried to vet the facts. Tried to glean the data that he would need to understand why he had lost, if he was going to improve.

Was she a superior opponent? Probably, he decided. If not more seasoned, then certainly more poised. But the way he saw it, he'd lost in just one main area. Timing. Preparation and awareness had been crucial in this match, but, at least relatively speaking he'd done the best he could with both. He'd known what Pokemon she was going to use and used almost the perfect weapon against it, whilst safeguarding his own intentions and acknowledging what she might've been able to bring to the table and preparing for it accordingly. They'd both stepped into this match as equals, he felt.

So that left the execution up for criticisim, and he felt that chiefly, it mustive been down to timing. Aside from an extremely overpowered physical attack, the one thing that Uranium's game-plan had brought to the field, that his hadn't, was a crucial sense of when and where to exploit her opponent. She'd known when and how to take advantage of Haxorus' strengths, mitigate his weaknesses and also, her final recovery, though timely, had also been expertly done. She'd taken advantage of his zeal and utilized the perfect setup for Reversal, with the opportunity that was given.

She'd beaten him in the inches.

"I don't really think I belong there." Was all he could think of to say, in summation.

"Seriously..." she began, as if trying to be comical. "I think you're the only one who's going to want to, anymore."

He noticed as she explained, though, in spite of her tone, she held a somber expression regarding the gymnasium bleachers with a somber expression. Ash had been ignoring the crowd for almost a minute now, but he realized then that they weren't booing at him.

They were booing at her.

* * *

Doc had been watching Holiday mix chemicals together in the student lab, for almost fifteen minutes now, after having watched his partner remove the thick, glass beaker from the bunsen burner and insert a spray-nozzle, his curiosity had reached his limit.

"So what is it?"

"I call it Max Repel," Holiday said simply, making Doc quirk a brow.

"...Didn't SilphCo used to make a product called Max Repel?"

Holiday laughed, as though considering something. Doc could only guess as to what. "Yeah. Used to," he remarked.

"Whats it do?" Doc asked, deciding to skip the obvious question, knowing he'd only be jerked around by his partner.

He expected an explanation. Not to be sprayed in the face. Doc tried to wipe the solution out of his eyes, primarily, before voicing his annoyance. Holiday just cut him off.

"Normally, it repels wild Pokemon by using a complex epideictic pheromone hydrocarbons, which-

"The short version, please." Doc said with distaste, flinging some of the mixture back into his partners face off of his fingertips.

Holiday huffed in aggravation. "It makes wild Pokemon avoid you."

Doc rolled his hand, wanting his partner to quickly drop the other shoe. "So what makes this batch so special? And why do we need it?"

Holiday rolled his eyes. "I used a mixture of synthesized biochromes, and-"

Doc cleared his throat, cutting the explanation short.

"Dammit, you don't let me have any fun." Holiday complained, swishing the squirt-bottle around theatrically. "Look dude, all you gotta know, is the shit's gonna make us damn near invisible to Pokemon. Wild or trained."

It was a little more complex than that, of course, as it relied on a vast number of chemical signifiers to disrupt the way Pokemon identify individual people, through their visual, aural and olfactory senses. Any Pokemon affected by it, if they recognized that there was a person there at all, which was unlikely, would be helpless to identify them. The compound was so potent, that it would probably work on Pokemon they owned, in high enough concentration.

"That's badass." Doc appraised at once. "Why doesn't SilphCo still market this stuff?"

"Full of carcinogens. Terrible for the environment." Holiday said matter-o-factly, enjoying the look of disgust Doc favored the droplets of repel on his fingertips with.

Doc tried to see the bright-side. "Well, at least the next time we run into Ash we won't have to wait until his Pikachu wanders off."

"Yep," Holiday said, as though he hadn't considered the point. "I mostly made it for when those guys from the Expo come after us, though."

Doc blinked. "...Why would-"

Holiday chuckled, and reached into the pocket of his jacket with his off hand. He withdrew a rainbow of Technical Machine diskettes, which Doc passingly recognized having seen hours ago. Working prototypes. Experimental designs. "I took some of these."

"How?" Doc gasped. They'd been right under the noses of hundreds of engineers and security personnel!

Holiday replaced the disks, and reached, this time, up the sleeve of his bolero, prodding around with a few fingers of the hand that held his concoction. Almost ten blank diskettes clattered to the floor. The taller admin chuckled "The old switcharoo."

Doc didn't know whether to be impressed, or irritated. The choice was made for him, though. As if on cue, both doors to the student lab burst open, and several official looking men clambered into the room, along with school security, trailed by angry technicians, holding black mini-disks of questionable origin.

The duo stood rigid as a mob filed into the room, surrounding their lab-table in an aggressive semi-circle.

"Well," Holiday drawled sarcastically. "That was a little faster than I'd planned."

Doc gulped, as he felt the wall against his back. "How's your Repel supposed to get us out of this?"

In an odd moment of silent clarity, Holiday glanced down at the bottle, then turned without warning and _hurled_ it through the window. He didn't waste any time before following it.

"Fuckin' _smart_." Doc complemented quickly.

Glass shattered and both Nebulae leapt through the scant remainder with a crash, and hastily fled the campus, after collecting their luckily intact bottle of formula off the ground and sending the appropriate "IS THAT A UFO?" over their shoulder to cover their retreat. Through respective speed and cowardice, Doc and Holiday easily evaded their human pursuers, and their Pokemon, true to the engineer's word, were helpless to assist.

* * *

Ash had done a fair amount of dragging his heels over his return to the Battling Clubhouse. Honestly, though, he wanted to at least get another word in with Uranium. He certainly wasn't going to pretend fight the Appeals Club's battles anymore. Wisely, Joe and Giselle had given him a wide berth leaving the gymnasium, and chosen not to entreat him again. He was in no mood. But if he didn't get in there soon, he would be out of daylight.

Heaving a breath, he lifted his hand to the barred double door that he'd been pacing in front of for the last five minutes and pushed his way inside. He was a little surprised by what he saw. The clubhouse darkened, much like before, he found Uranium sitting in the middle of the battle-square with her arms wrapped around her knees. The Battle Club rep sat in the midst of a large collection of poke balls. Ash could see Dusk Balls, Net Balls, Quick Balls, and other types he barely recognized amidst an overwhelming majority of Ultra Balls. She looked contemplative, and maybe, he thought, a little sad.

He felt his nose crinkle. Was the tough-girl act finally beginning to crack? Honestly, the boos hard bothered him a little bit, so he could only imagine how she felt.

"This a bad time?" He asked, drawing her attention from the floor.

"No." She said softly. "Just thinking."

"'bout what?" he asked. He tried not to smile as he waited for her to pour her heart out, and admit that she felt bad about the whole situation.

Awkwardly, though, Uranium's mood seemed to change, as she reached out and quickly picks up five poke balls, and gathered them into a pile along with the the Cherish ball closest to which held her Haxorus. "About what Pokemon I'm gonna train with tomorrow. Why?"

Ash felt his features drop in disappointment. "Oh, I just thought maybe you were upset about...You know," he trailed off leadingly.

"Oh that?" She remarked with a snort. "Nah. I'd have to be a real loser to let some lame-ass coordinators don't bother me."

Her nonchalance dug at the edge of his wounded pride, and made him ruffle.

"Okay, seriously, what's your beef?" Ash snapped, finally, inciting a wide-eyed look from Uranium. "Why do you hate coordinators so much? I may not be one, and the ones here might not have treated you so nice, but I have other really good friends who are, and they're some of the best people I know!" He yelled, with fists clenched. Whether or not she'd beaten him, whether or not they were getting along better, He couldn't just stand here and let her talk like that.

Uranium looked away from him, and nodded slowly, as she stared out onto the battling floor, affixing the set of six poke balls onto her belt, and stuffing the remainder back into her pack. "Let me tell you something."

Ash crossed his arms.

"About seven years ago," she began with a strained expression. "I was living in a group home."

Ash didn't know exactly what that was, but he thought it better to listen at this point, guessing from the tone of her voice, that it was nothing good.

"Me and seventy other kids, most of whom I would guess are probably either still there, or just getting out."

"You were an orphan?" he guessed, from context clues.

She nodded. "I guess my parents gave me up when I was about four or five. I don't remember a whole lot about it. Everyone thinks that because of how I act, that I'm from some old family with a strong battling background, who was brought up to despise all the new-blood coordinators."

Ash wasn't sure how he should respond, so he just stuck with his line of questioning. "So why do you, then?"

"Do you think you can understand what it's like to live in a group home?" She asked. "Do you have any idea what that was like?"

He didn't know what that had to do with what he'd asked, but he was again, certain that he didn't, so he shook his head.

"If you really want to know the truth about it, then you could say that I'd been coordinating since I was five years old, in a way," she said with a bitter smile. "When someone comes looking for a potential adoption, they aren't shown every kid in the group home."

Ash just widened his eyes, and pushed his mouth to the side, to show that he was listening, but very confounded.

"The 'problem children', the troubled ones, maybe they don't behave so nice, or there's something really wrong with them, the home makes an effort not to show them off. Instead you get the 'Annies' which are your pretty kids, the ones that read and write well, and have good manners. It so that the administration can get a good adoption rate, by cycling these kids out as fast as possible, and make grant money for the home."

"And you were a problem child?" Ash guessed, thinking he could see where this was going. She was mad because coordinators reminded her of the kids who'd been adopted, instead of her. He supposed that made a lot of sense. It was a little personal, but...

"Hell no, I was an Annie." She said, destroying his presumption completely. "I hated living in the home. I was the first one out there, with my little polished flats and ribbons in my hair, let me tell you. I'd start naming capitals from around the world, doing long division in my head, reciting lines from Othello, you name it. I'd have done anything to impress someone enough to take me home, and get me the heck out of that place."

Ash, now even more at a loss, but not interested, prodded her on. "So... did you?"

Uranium shook her head. "No. I don't know why, but it just never happened for me. Lots of other Annies got adopted, but not me. I think maybe I came on too strong. Nobody really likes a know it all."

Ash thought he finally understood. Until she went on, shattering his presumptions again.

"I found that out one day, when I told one of the 'problem' girls at the lunch-table how she should try harder if she wanted to get adopted. That she should smile more, and act more friendly." She smiled with humor, and nodded her head. "She came over the table at me, and stuck a plastic spork in my eye."

Ash denied the urge to reflexively reach to his mouth, when she flipped up her eye-patch to reveal her left eye, which had a wide, milky scar that ran across her retina, making it look like an egg fried over-easy. He sucked air through his teeth in respect for the painful looking injury.

"They took her to another home, but I was still pretty upset about it for a while. I was really afraid that nobody would want a kid who looked like a pirate." She said with a chuckle. "But looking back, really, I think I was just a little too old for anyone to want to adopt at that point. Adoptions past seven years old are pretty rare."

Ash nodded, and settled into a more comfortable position with Pikachu.

"I was seeing all these older kids, sixteen, seventeen year olds, who were still troubled, still stuck at the home, and I kept thinking, man, I'm gonna be here forever. I'm gonna be trapped here just like them. I was angry, and I didn't know what to do. So I started acting out, even thought I knew it wasn't going to help anything. And sooner or later, I stopped getting asked to parade in front of the adoptive parents. I became a troubled kid."

Ash didn't realize that he'd taken a seat across from her, to listen. He found himself having to reset the expression on his face every so often.

"I started getting into a lot of fights, around when I was eight or nine. With everybody. I'd fight new kids my age, just as soon as they showed up at the home. Especially if I knew they were gonna be Annies. Every time one of them left, I thought: 'That should've been me. I'm better! They weren't as nice as I could be!' or 'They didn't know as much as I did!' I did a lot of brooding then. The only time I was ever really happy was when they'd bring the Pokemon around on weekends, from the daycare center next door." She pointed at Pikachu, and gave his partner the closest thing to a happy expression he thought he'd seen from her all day. "There was this Raichu there that a really liked, who I always fed crackers to. For like a whole year, he was the only friend I had, because I kept beating up all the other kids, and nobody would talk to me anymore." Just like that, her smile vanished. "...And then I guess whoever was leaving him at the center moved away, because the Raichu stopped showing up."

"Sounds like tough times," Ash said regretfully.

"Oh man." She remarked, rolling her eyes. "After that, I just went off the deep end. I started a big fight in the common room one day. I choked some girl I'd never even met before, because she started showing off how well she could sing. Well! I find out about two minutes later that she's some prospective parent's actual daughter, there with him on a visit. No questions asked, they took my ass right down the street to the juvenile detention center, and threw me in lock up."

Ash felt his expression lengthen in disbelief.

"I had a lot of time to think, while I was in there, as you might imagine," she said sarcastically. "There's even less to do in lock-up, than there is in the home."

Ash smirked at that, but maintained the same level of subdued interest.

"When I was in there, though, I started thinking about that girl who had come over the lunch-table after me. I thought 'this was probably how she felt.' She was just tired of faking it. I realized that all that time that I had spent, trying to be, pretending to be such an amazing little kid, I wasn't really proving anything to anyone. I didn't really know long-division. I just memorized a problem I'd heard in a sci-fi re-run. That's really all it was. I was just practicing tricks to get attention. Even if I'd have gotten adopted, it really wouldn't have had anything to do with how good or bad of a kid I was. Just how impressive I seemed. Because being an Annie, really, wasn't about how pretty or smart or well mannered you were. Just how pretty or smart or well mannered you seemed compared to the troubled kids. But the thing about it was, the troubled kids weren't really troubled kids, either! Well, I mean, some of them were, but for the most part, we were all just kids without any parents, and that's_ all _we were. There was nothing about me that made me better than that girl, except what people saw. Here I was in the same situation she was, after all. For all I know, that girl had an amazing sense of humor. Maybe she was a great talker. Maybe she had a beautiful smile. Maybe she would have made some family really, really happy. And who knows, maybe she did!"

Ash stuck out his lip as if to agree with the assertion.

"I decided that I didn't want to pretend to be something I really wasn't anymore. I wanted to be who I was on the inside. If it didn't get me out of the home, oh well, I was pretty much over that, because the detention center sucked about eight-billion times worse. I worked a lot with my juvenile counselor, while I was there, taking therapy for my anger problem and stuff, and he found out that I really liked Pokemon, when I let it slip about the Raichu I'd played with back at the group home, and he mentioned the trainer program to me."

Uranium shook her head. "At the time, I didn't think I'd have a chance in hell at doing that. Who was gonna pay for it?"

Ash nodded. A trainer's license was very expensive. He knew that much. He wasn't sure how much exactly, but he knew that his father had sent his mom a considerable amount of money to pay for it, when he was preparing for his own journey.

"But surprisingly, my counselor got a sponsorship going for me, and even though I had to stay at the detention center for 10 more months, until my term was up because It wasn't the first time I'd been in trouble, and the judge refused to let me out early, I got a Pokemon egg on my eleventh birthday, and took off as soon as as soon as Axew hatched. I never even had to set foot back in the group home. They just sent all my stuff to me."

"I..." She began hesitantly, her voice suddenly becoming quiet. "I remember crying for hours when I walked out of Castelia City. The whole freaking' way across Route 4. I got so much sand in my eyes, but it was just...cathartic, you know? I didn't have to worry about showing off, or hating who I was anymore. I was just me, for the first time. I wasn't the girl who vied for attention, and I wasn't the girl who spoke with her fists, either. I was just another trainer, who wanted to fight her way to the top of the pile, and now was my chance to prove I could do it. I really found myself, that day."

Ash found he had leaned back onto his hands by the conclusion of the story, and found that Pikachu next to him had done the same. They turned to regard one another with the same touched expression, their eyes watery with emotion.

"I never told anyone that, before," she remarked before letting out a long breath, and rubbing her jaw. "I don't usually talk this much." Finally turning to face him, she let out a short gasp of surprise. "A-are you two crying?", she asked.

"No!" Ash balked and hurriedly looked to the floor, blinking furiously, while Pikachu reacted similarly. The trainer scrambled for an excuse. "There's dust in our eyes." Truthfully, he felt like a real asshole for making a bunch of assumptions about her character, now.

Uranium nodded. "Yeah, sorry about that. Apparently someone on the janitorial staff is a big fan of the Appeals Club too. I have to do all the sweeping and stuff myself, so I'm a little behind."

He let out a relieved sigh. There was that good luck!

Uranium continued her story after a moment of silence. "After that, we battled non-stop, every day. Some days, I'd set up shop in one place, and challenge every trainer that crossed my path, from dawn till dusk. I remember one day, We battled and beat seventy trainers in one day. One right after the other. I'd just won my sixth badge, and I'd _really_ beat the stuffing out of that gym-leader. I guess quite a few people saw it happen, coz I just got swarmed as soon as I stepped into the street. I was afraid they were gonna jump me at first!"

The Battle Club rep made a figuring gesture. "I think that was really where I first started garnering a lot of attention. I finished up my first season and made it all the way to the top eight, and even though I lost out in the semi-finals, I still had almost double the battling experience of all the other trainers in the tournament combined. I think I finished with, like, Fourteen hundred wins and two hundred losses on the season."

"Wow," Ash offered. That was way more battles than he'd gotten in his first season. Certainly way more than he'd won.

"When I heard about the Steven Stone grant, I decided that I would try. I didn't really think it would pan out, but it sounded like a good deal. You have to write a ten-thousand word essay to apply, and include a letter of recommendation. I kinda half-assed both, but I guess Steven thought they were pretty good. Long story short, I get flown out to Meteor Falls, I make complete mince-meat of everyone there, and now here I am, much to the chagrin of every coordinator in the school, I'm sure."

"You could've gone anywhere. Even Pokemon U. The Steven Stone grant has gotta be big bucks," Ash asserted with a disbelieving look. He knew tuition here was expensive, but there was no way it was that much.

"It's about a quarter million pokedollars. I went here because this is where Champion Lance went to school. I've sort of got a thing for Lance, being a Dragon trainer and all." She laughed. "I used to have a poster of him above my bed, back when..." She let the sentence fade away when Ash made an uncomfortable face, and laughed more heavily instead.

"So what did you do with all that money?"

"I donated most of it." Uranium said with a shrug. "Gave it to the group home in Castelia City. Help them expand their adoption program, hopefully get more of those kids out and into families. Tried to give some of it to the Counselors Office at the Juvenile Center there, but they wouldn't take any."

Ash nodded in new-found respect for someone he could now honestly consider a worthy rival. Things fell silent for a while.

"Do you understand, now, why Haxorus and I don't like coordinators?" she asked, rubbing her cheek just below her eye.

Ash knew he hadn't exactly gotten a straight answer, but he could put the pieces together. It wasn't _really_ that she didn't like coordinators. It seemed to him, that she didn't like coordinat_ing_. And she didn't like coordinating, because she believed it valued perceived worth, over personal achievement. Ash smiled at his assumption. And people thought he was _dense_. He paused when he thought back on what she said.

"Haxorus doesn't like coordinators, either?" Ash asked, incredulous at the thought.

Uranium shrugged. "Haxorus and I are the same. You and Pikachu are too, right?"

Ash thought about what that really meant. He and Pikachu agreed on most things, but he'd never really thought much about why. "Well, yeah, but..." He didn't think that it was exactly what she was implying. "I didn't teach him to think just like me." He certainly wouldn't have taught Pikachu to dislike the things he disliked, simply because he disliked them. That was for him to decide, right?

"Neither did I." Uranium said simply, as if she couldn't understand why he was so confused. "I mean you can say that it is, whatever you think it is. Maybe Pikachu takes after you naturally, but maybe all we can really do is teach our Pokemon the things that we know, the things that we believe are true, through our actions. Maybe that's why I am the way I am, and my Pokemon are the way they are," she said thoughtfully. "And maybe, that's all there is to it."

Ash was dumbfounded.

"You may not have taught them to think just exactly like you, but surely you try to teach your Pokemon the things you know? Your values? The things you consider true?" she offered. "You can teach them the things everyone else believes are important, or you can teach them to value the same things you do, the same things you were taught to value. We both know which you'd choose."

Ash knew that was the truth. Integrity. Compassion. Friendship. He'd tried to teach that to all of them. That having heart, was better than being the winner. That they could all be friends, and that they were more important to him than anything else. That he respected them, the same way they respected him. He'd taught them those things, because that was what he knew. His mother had taught him those things when he was growing up, and he'd passed them along. Lots of other people had lots of other ideas about what was important, when it came to Pokemon, but that was what he had chosen to teach, above everything else.

"I taught my Pokemon everything I knew. And all I really learned from growing up that has any value to me anymore, is how to struggle. Deep down, I believe in kicking and scratching and biting to get what you deserve. I believe in competition. I believe that you achieve through battling and nothing else, because nothing else in my life has ever been anywhere close to fulfilling me, as that. It may not be your way of seeing things, Ash, and it may not sit right with the coordinators, but as long as I am head representative, this clubhouse will remain closed to anyone who isn't fully dedicated," she said with a shake of her head. "If you refuse to give one hundred percent of yourself to the arena, then you don't belong on my field. They can choose to be coordinators, or they can choose to be trainers. Not both." To her, Ash could see, the two were diametrically opposed, and that viewpoint would not change.

Ash found, that in spite of it's stubbornness, in spite of it's complete obstinacy, that he could respect that. If she was head rep, and if she really did have as much conviction and as much good reason, even if it was personal, as all of _that_, he couldn't find it in himself to argue the point. She was going to stick to her guns, just the same as him.

Joe and Giselle were on their own. He didn't exactly agree, but he could certainly agree to disagree.

"I'd like it if we could battle again." Ash began, struggling to find the words to say what he felt, but he found that he just couldn't. "Later. Much later. You're... " he didn't want to wax defeatist this early in his journey, but there was no denying that she was on another level, that was well above the one he was on. "...miles ahead of me." He resisted the urge to say light-years, even though that's what it honestly felt like. He rubbed the back of his head, and his eyes sank to the floor between them.

"Look, I already said that it's not my job to encourage anyone, but...Don't let what happened today discourage you from going after what you want. I'm nobody special, alright? Anybody can get what I've got, with enough hard work." She smiled, coming to her feet, and offering him her hand. "Nobody ever knows what you're capable of but you. If you believe you can accomplish it, then somewhere in you, you have the means to."

"Thanks," he said, slapping his hand to hers. She pulled him sharply to a standing position.

"I'll be seeing you in the Indigo League, this year, right?" Uranium asked, turning the helping hand into a shaking one.

Ash smiled at that, returning the gesture. Then, he could be ready. "Absolutely."

With a smile, the Pallet Town trainer, and Pikachu departed. As he stepped outside, he was in lighter spirits, in spite of how thoroughly beaten today had left him feeling. He hadn't stopped thinking about what that meant as far as his ultimate goal of being the best, or even about competing with Paul went, but he was now sure that it was progress in the right direction, even if it was stumbling instead of in leaps and bounds.

"I'm beat." he remarked toward his partner, as the rodent walked alongside him, towards the campus entrance off of Route 5.

As he passed the bike-rack in front of the westernmost building, he sort of wished that he had one of his own. He had a long trip into Cerulean ahead of him. As his gaze strayed longingly upon them, one in particular couldn't help but catch his eye. Ha wasn't sure what it was, at first, until he casually trotted over for a closer inspection. It was a strikingly pink bike that he thought he'd seen before. Well...maybe parts of it at least. Most of it's componentry was some black material he couldn't really identify, but the body, that seemed really familiar to him. Who did he know with a pink bike? As he let his eyes take in its detail, he was reminded of just who's it was. An unmistakable bike chain was wrapped around the post; otherwise unassuming heavy steel links, held together on both ends by a gray padlock with the Cascade badge riveted to the face, keys hanging uselessly from the tumbler.

This was, without a doubt, Misty's bike.

Ash Ketchum, was by nature, anything but a thief. But thieving from a thief technically made you a liberator, right? After setting Pikachu up on the handlebars and looking both ways, he pilfered it back unknowingly from Holiday, who had many minutes hence, fled the school. Ash did notice, as he pedaled rapidly away, that the front fork was caved in and rubbing against the tire well, as though something heavy had fallen on it. Like, maybe a big rock or something.

"Wonder how that happened." he said quietly to Pikachu.

"Pika." his partner offered with a shrug, after taking up a more comfortable vantage on his shoulder.

Putting the thought aside, the intrepid young boy looked ahead at the horizon. It seemed as though it was going to storm, but that was okay with him. The weather matched his mood, after all. Murky and sullen, but fully ready to wash away the dirt on the path, and begin the journey anew.

* * *

A/N: This might be my favorite one yet. I'm already hard at work on the next one, so keep an eye out for it.


	10. Chapter X

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Ash finally makes his return to Cerulean City to reclaim what's rightfully his. But who else will be waiting there for him? A better question might be: With the Invitational just around the corner and issues stacking higher and higher on her plate, will Misty be able to keep her temper from destroying both her career and her friends? Nevermind that, what'll happen to Ash's already fragile ego when he finds out why his friends are _really _here?

A/N: Could it be? Could it finally be! Yes. It's here. Finally. New Chapter. Trust me, I'm as thrilled as you are.

Although, while you're here let me ask you something: Do you think it's too early to start a chapter with a cliché dream sequence?

Pfft, whatever, _Philistine_. Watch me flex.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter X**

"Hidden Agenda"

He felt his fingers connect with it's silver-plated majesty; a tactile sensation which he so acutely enjoyed, it made shivers run through him. The names of all who'd laid hands on it previously lay engraved in it's wide, ten kilogram mast and a blank gap of metal would soon bear his signature as well... because he was the new Indigo League Champion.

It seemed that everyone in the whole Colosseum had their eyes on him, looking down at the boy who'd just toppled a legend. A once reckless prodigy who'd returned with maximum vengeance and strength to take what he desired. Now a true legend in his own respect. Lance certainly regarded him with the respect due. The whole crowd stood in awe, and amidst a circle of his friends, he thrust the massive cup high into the air. Pikachu, his ever faithful and powerful companion rode triumphantly skyward, perched in it's bowl. The response was electrifying. The crowd roared, an exploded into wild motion, and he added his own victorious scream to the sound.

"You did it buddy!" Brock, yelled, clapping him on the back, his smile wide with enthusiasm.

"Way to go, Ash!" Dawn cried, jumping up and down at his side. She was in her cheering gear, and wore an ecstatic expression that made him feel infectiously good.

"That was an amazing battle!" May said, her expression wide-eyed.

Max was still grasping at the side of his head in disbelief. "I've never seen anything like it," the younger sibling said loudly.

"I never thought you'd make it this far;" It seemed like this had to be some rival of his, so he turned to see who'd spoken. He lowered the chalice gently to his side and as he did, the noise of the crowd dimmed to nothing.

"I didn't think you had what it took." It was Misty, standing tall behind him. Her arms were crossed over her chest tightly, and she looked uncomfortable with the idea of him holding the Indigo League trophy. Like the idea was troublesome; threw some of her notions about what was required to win it into doubt. He felt the hands of his friends leave him.

"You always seemed like such a wannabe." He glanced around. He really couldn't understand why this was happening. Hadn't she seen what happened? He'd decimated Lance. He'd destroyed the Elite Four. He'd crushed every single opponent on his way to the top. There was no more doubt. There was no more uncertainty, either. He was the greatest trainer in Kanto. Maybe the world. This was no longer open to speculation. "I guess I was wrong, though."

He guessed she was right about _that!_ So then, where had his friends gone? Where had Pikachu gone? Where had his trophy gone? He stood alone and empty-handed. Just him and her, in the middle of an empty field. No crowd was gathered. No cheers filled the air. Just silence. Ash tried to say something, but his voice was just a whisper that even he could not hear.

"I didn't think I'd ever get to tell you this..." Misty began quietly, taking a step toward him. "You're always working too hard, or too far away for me to really talk to."

He took a step back as she advanced, his nerves screaming at their proximity. She was practically making contact with his face, nearly speaking the works into his mouth. "The reason I've been missing you so much?" He tried to wriggle away when he felt her hands come to his lapels, but his strength was like that of an infant against her.

She craned over him, and he could not look away. She descended on him but stopped short, just a fraction of a millimeter away, like she were trying to inspect his eyes for some visual flaw or perhaps, more awkwardly, see what his breath smelled like. Needless to say, it was very uncomfortable to him. "It's because, ever since we met..."

He felt his eyes widen in...some emotion. Fear? Panic? It was something like that. Maybe it was more like anger, but who could say? He wanted to break free, he wanted to run away. He wanted to find his trophy and hide in it.

"I've..." He watched her eyes become large cerulean disks of emotion, glassed with moisture.

"Always..." Her eyebrows tilted upward in the center, in a way he wasn't sure he'd ever seen her display before. What was it?

He felt his palpitations slamming against the roof of his mouth, when he watched her lips move to form the final words. Instead of saying them, though, she screamed annoyingly into his face at point-blank range. "BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!"

Ash woke up groggily in bed and fumbled outward for his gear in all directions, trying not to move or open his eyes. It proved to be senseless, since it was on the pillow next to his head, along with Pikachu who was still sleeping rather peacefully unbeknownst to Ash, crammed between his chin and his collar-bone, jagged tail hovering closely over his nose. Once he'd gotten ahold of it, and shut off the piercing alarm, he laid there for a moment, with his eyes clenched shut and tried to recall the crucial components of his dream, which had already faded into the fog of his subconscious. He felt like he was a little troubled. But the dream had seemed sorta awesome at first! What had it been about? As he thumbed at his poke-gear and saw that it was 11:45, he remembered that there was something he needed to do today...

Yeah, that was right, he thought! Ash sprang upright in bed, and sent Pikachu sailing. Today was the day he'd exact his plan for vengeance! He'd spent all yesterday evening pedaling back into town, thinking it over. When he'd gotten into town, however, he'd had only enough energy to get Charizard checked into the Pokemon Center, pay for a room with what little winnings he'd accrued, and pass the hell out. He'd reluctantly had a run in with another trainer on his way back in, (of course managing to get himself made fun of, for riding a pink bicycle) and even though the battle hadn't turned into much, he'd won what would've essentially been a five on six battle without too much trouble. The other trainer had dealt almost exclusively in ground-type Pokemon, though, and he knew Pikachu was itching for a chance to tear it up, after being sidelined in his last two major bouts. Misty would do nicely.

Speaking of which, he wondered, where was Pikachu? His answer came in the form of a jolt, as Pikachu climbed over the edge of the covers, and back onto the bed itself, before loosing a crack of electricity at the trainer who'd flung him off the bed unintentionally in his waking moments.

Thereafter, they were up and at 'em, however unorthodox the transition might've been. Ash didn't see the need to argue, and Pikachu knew there was no point in trying to curb the young trainers exuberance. Ash hardly even noticed Pikachu's electrical shocks anymore, unless they were particularly ferocious, so he was looking for his shoes without so much as a grumble, while Pikachu made ready to leave. They worked an orbit around the room, collecting the strewn belongings Ash had carelessly slung about before collapsing face-first into the pillows last night.

"Keys." Ash noted, looking around, and rummaging through his backpack. "Where'd the keys for the bike-lock go?" he asked, quite surprised when Pikachu emerged from beneath the bed, key-ring clamped between his teeth, before offering it helpfully to his trainer.

"How'd that get under there?" Ash wondered aloud, stuffing them back into his pocket where they belonged. He needed to keep better track of his stuff, he though, with a shake of his head. He shrugged it off, and nodded towards the door.

Nurse Joy met them at the base of the stairs, offering Charizard's poke ball up to him with a smile. He took it back with a smile, and exchanged a few niceties with her, before handing back the card-key to his room, and leaving.

Cerulean City was even more massive and busy than he remembered it, being quite unlike his hometown. Viridian City was a much larger metropolitan area that had expanded so much over the past several years that it seemed to be on the very doorstep of Pallet. Pewter was a small, but densely populated town that was large enough to warrant calling it a City, but both of the aforementioned towns paled to the size of Cerulean, which nearly rivaled Vermillion as a port-city, though Vermillion was aimed toward commercial shipping and public transit while Cerulean was an almost purely tourism-driven port. While the city of flowing water and blooming flowers didn't have quite the same enormity as the commercial or industrial centers of Celadon or Saffron, it was easy to see the appeal. White sand beaches and high-rise glass-bodied resort hotels covered the cape shoreline to the north, and rimmed what was becoming a huge municipal hub.

He unlocked Misty's bike, opting to push it along instead of pedal it, as Pikachu took up a healthy trot alongside him. He was pretty sure he still remembered where Misty's gym was, but he checked it on his gear just in case. It proved not far away at all, barely worth the precautionary check, and he felt more than a little silly following the turn by turn instructions as the gymnasium loomed visibly in the distance. Putting the phone away, Ash and his partner strolled casually down the sidewalk, taking in the local sights as they went on their short journey.

Not so far away, Misty was looking at herself in a full length mirror.

The gym-leader had to hand it to her sisters. If she was reading these routine notes correctly, and had properly understood all the things they'd told her earlier in the day, the three of them had cooked up something really special this year. Which, she supposed, wasn't that surprising. If nothing else, her sisters were natural born performers. They knew just the right combination of classiness and visual appeal, mixing ability and presentation, in way that just outright escaped her. It was why she was not a Sensational Sister, she supposed with a wry smile. But that was okay. She preferred to appreciate her sisters' performances from a distance, anyways. Just because she respected their skills, did not mean she wished to emulate them. Which she supposed was what caused her so much distress certainly. Somehow, her position in all of this, had moved from spectator and administrator, to performer and participant.

Before her sisters had their say, however, she would have her own matters to take care of, those being chiefly, associating herself with the event in the eyes of the attendees, and announcing all of the sponsorship as well as the scheduling in a way that garnered respect for the event, her sisters, and her Gym. It was a simple job, and amounted to little more than a custodial duty, wherein the Invitational itself was concerned. It remained, however, one of the most crucial duties of the day, and she intended to carry it out in the most professional manner she was able.

The Cerulean Gym-leader adjusted herself in the mirror as she regarded her reflection and frowned. It wasn't that she hated the outfit that her sisters had assembled for her, after discovering that her old dress didn't fit anymore... but she was really more of a 'yellow' or 'blue' person. She tugged at the hem of the skirt. It was a little higher than she liked as well. It wasn't important, really. She could deal. Besides, she had prospects far more deserving of getting stressed over than stupid clothes, she decided.

Like, for instance, what she was going to do about her soon to arrive guests. She groaned, and made her way to the front foyer. She wouldn't have traded them for anything, but sometimes, her friends were a huge pain in her butt.

Ash, ever closer, was thinking the same thingas he tried desperately to keep the bike's front wheel in line, against the constant brushing of the fork-post. He elected finally to just carry it, since it was actually quite light, though it proved to be an awkwardly bulky item. Why couldn't Misty have kept better track of her dumb bike?

He heaved a sigh and looked up at the Cerulean Gym, as he humped along. It was different now, just like Misty was. Not in a bad way, he guessed. Just different. The Gym, like his friend, had obviously undergone some considerable physical changes, and while Ash wasn't sure he liked the fact that Misty was so much taller than him (not to mention stronger), her Gym was a sight to behold. Still under construction, with massive jig-cranes to the western-most end of the complex, the glass and steel structure gleamed in the high noon sunlight. Though it's appearance was brand new, a heavy, lighted blue sign that covered the face of the building denoted it as the very same gym where he'd faced off against Misty so many years ago, for his second badge ever. Well, actually, he thought with a frown, the circumstances were a little unusual. He hadn't actually beaten her. Her sisters had given him that badge. He shrugged. He had to get one from her this go-around, right? He didn't think he would be able to accept any less than that.

He stopped to lock up the bike out front and then mounted the steps that lead to the gymnasium. To say that the lobby was far busier than he'd have imagined it would be, would have been an understatement. The moment he stepped through the glass doors, he practically ran smack into someone's back. The entire foyer was standing room only. He wondered if he would be able to get a battle in today, with all these people around. What the heck was going on?

Ash didn't notice the person he'd bumped into turn and face him. If he had, he probably would've been pretty surprised.

"Oh. Ash," greeted Brock, as the Pallet trainer continued to try and look over his shoulder towards the front of the crowd. Beside him, Dawn practically screamed.

Before Ash even had time to fully process what was happening, he was hit with a full-force hug as Dawn propelled herself into him with a straightforward lunge. He stared at Brock and tried to form the beginnings of what he felt. "What? How?" he began, but then decided it didn't matter.

"I was really starting to miss you guys!" he said with a sudden rush of euphoria. He accepted Dawns gesture more completely, and reached out with his unpinned arm, to snatch hold of Brock's vest, and drag him into the hug as well. It seemed all of their in-fighting was that easily forgotten.

"Us too." Brock admitted, though the younger girl seemed more content to remain silent, and blush at initiating the overzealous display of affection, once the trio had given each other some space.

Ash tilted his head back, and ran a hand through his hair. "Wow."

"You look weird without a hat," Dawn noted, finally muscling past her embarrassment. Ash turned to gripe more directly, but she seemed to remember something. Without delay, she removed her poke balls from her belt, and held them clutched between the knuckles of both hands. Suddenly, the crowded waiting room was a lot more crowded. Piplup, Bunneary, Pachirisu, Quilava, Togekiss, and even Dawn's massive Mamoswine practically filled the space to the brim. A dramatic, if a bit abbreviated chase followed, as Pikachu and Ash made a mad sprint for escape, back out the door through which they'd come. This time, he had remembered to push instead of pull but unfortunately, his shoelace had come untied and he tripped down the stairs.

He landed mostly unhurt on the pavement below, with the sky above him, and seven angry faces looking down on him from all sides. Dawn, easily the most intimidating of these, crossed her arms. "You couldn't have at least said goodbye to all my Pokemon. They're all your friends, too."

"Pikapi!" Pikachu, standing just beside his head, gasped as if to admonish his trainer, slyly supporting what was obviously the winning side. Ash frowned.

"You too!" Dawn said snappily at the electric type. Beside the yellow rodent, Piplup and Bunneary likewise crossed their arms, and much like his trainer, Pikachu shrank a bit.

Ash stammered. "I said I was sorry!"

"Pikachu," his partner agreed.

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me. Tell them!"

Ash sat up and heaved a sigh. Dawn was right. During his trip through Sinnoh, he'd learned a lot, and become very close with his Pokemon. But he'd also become close to Dawn, and her Pokemon. His quick return home had not only left his friends in the dark, but their Pokemon as well. To someone else, it might've seemed like a simple lack of foresight, but to Ash, who was so invested in his friendship with Pokemon, it seemed like an impossible guilt. He tried to muster up an apology, but it got stuck in his throat. Maybe he really was a bad friend, just like Misty had said. He let his head hang, bringing both sets of fingers together, to mesh behind it, and cradle himself. What was he supposed to say to make that better? Sorry didn't really cut it, here, but he didn't really know what else to say. Should he grovel, should he have thrown himself on his face and begged forgiveness? He didn't know how that would make things better, either. Bringing the clasped hands to his face, he clenched his lips tightly in gloved fingers. He should've made this apology weeks ago. Crow was easier to eat warm, honestly.

He looked at all of Dawn's Pokemon in turn, taking a moment to look each one of them in the eye. He didn't know what his face looked like at the moment, but he guessed it was as pathetic as it felt, when their stern looks softened. He made an inviting gesture then, and was surprised by their surge, when he opened his arms wide. He embraced them all, from Mamoswine's tusk, to Togekiss' wingtip, squeezing them as tightly as he dared with Pikachu crammed in between. The electric type favored everyone with just enough electrical energy to let them know that he was there, and hugged his friends similarly.

There was nothing that needed said.

After a few moments, Dawn helped him back to his feet. Caught up in the relieved smiles they now wore, neither noticed the throng of people departing from the gymnasium behind them. Three sensational sisters led the pack, and somewhere in the middle, a fourth Waterflower wrestled her way through, finally emerging beside Brock.

"Hey, what's up?" She asked, innocently, bumping into his shoulder to disrupt the slowly emerging stare he was laying on her sisters.

"Oh, Hey!" Brock said with a friendly wave, as he turned to look at her, once the initial irritation had passed. Truthfully, he was surprised at how tall she was now. She'd really filled out, since he'd seen her last, unlike their younger companion. She wasn't dressed as casually as she usually was, but he knew that even though the occasions were rare. she could get dolled up with the best of them. It was in her genes, after all. Still, he hadn't seen her so elegantly dressed since she'd agreed to assist with Melvin's magic act all those years ago, and this outfit seemed somewhat more sensible than the Goldeen-themed gown she'd wore then. "Lookin' good." Brock gave her a smile and pat on the shoulder, popped his eyebrows in complement, then left it at that.

She tugged at the hem of her darted skirt, which felt much shorter than it had in the dressing room, and then rolled her eyes. "It's not really my style," she admitted with a frown. "So what are you guys doing here? I didn't get a chance to listen to all of your voice-mail message. Things were pretty hectic this morning," she explained.

Brock only shrugged, before turning back to face Ash and Dawn. "Oh, we're here to meet up with Max." Brock explained. "He's going to be our new traveling partner."

"Wow, that was fast," Misty remarked, without pause.

"The plans are kind of rushed." Brock favored her with a serious expression. "You don't even want to know what a no advance-notice plane ticket from Sinnoh costs. The training season starts in Johto about one week from today, though, so it's hurry, hurry, hurry!"

Misty curled her bottom lip in appreciation of the statement, though she'd sort of meant that it seemed like they were moving on from Ash a little quickly. She supposed it was better that he took it that way, since it really wasn't any of her business, anyways. It certainly didn't seem like there was any lack of camaraderie left between them. She nursed a small twitch of frustration as she stood watching Dawn wrap the pallet trainer in another awkward hug. She wondered if she'd betrayed her displeased expression at that, when she felt Brock eyeballing her. Rapidly, she looked out ahead towards her sisters, in an effort to throw him off.

"That's cool," she offered in a hurry, forcing all of the wild and uninvited jealousy out of her features.

"So what's going on here?" Brock nodded dismissively, but misty couldn't decide if there was a knowing quality to it. "I'm guessing it's got something to do with why you're so dressed up."

Misty rolled her eyes. "My sisters are headed for a photo-op, right now. Made a big deal out of it, of course." She crossed her arms. "Without telling me." This was all supposed to be lead-up for the event, later today; a final effort to dredge up the last bit of public support and notice. Even worse, this was not the only detail of the event they had left unmentioned.

Casting the thought aside, Misty waved her hands. "Today is the Invitational. It's not that big of a deal, really."

She was underselling it, she knew. After all, Champion Lance was going be there. All the same, she didn't want to attract too much of her friend's attention to the matter. It'd be better if she could get them all to go on their way, rather than loiter around all day. She'd planned elaborately for the possibility that she would have to deal with Ash today, but having Dawn, Brock and Max around was going to compound the difficulty of a matter that was already quite precarious. She didn't need Brock around, as much as she loved him, because he would needlessly hover around her sisters all day, and creep everyone out with his endless gushing. She certainly didn't need Dawn around because, being oh so like Ash as she'd recognized her to be, meant infinite and untold depths of trouble, especially if Dawn realized who her older sisters actually were. She couldn't rightly expect that the young coordinator would sit on her hands if she knew that two of her older sisters were International Ribbon Cup winners.

She couldn't adequately think of a reason why she didn't need Max around, but she was sure there was one. Although, more likely, she needed Max to _show up_, so that she could send the new traveling trio on their way.

And all three of them were just minor woes compared to what she'd have to deal with if Ash insinuated himself too deeply in the days events. She mentally resisted the urge to bring a palm to her forehead, when she considered it. Of all the days for him to come to town! First off, Ash was back for his just deserts over this whole Pokemon trade mix-up, which, okay, she was willing to admit, was her fault. Best case scenario, that meant that Ash would pointlessly and frustratingly follow her around all day until she could swap Pokemon back with him, and provide some reasonable degree of compensation for his distress (something she honestly had no idea how she'd accomplish), and that was absolute best-case scenario. Second, the moment Ash found out who was going to be at the invitational, there was absolutely no way he was going to just leave. And that thought alone made her blood run cold. She couldn't imagine the potential damage Ash could do to her slowly building reputation, if she let him run his mouth off in front of the Champ. Greater still was that potential if she allowed him near the champion at all, she considered; for if the young trainer had his way, she was sure the Champion would be spending less time attending the invitational, and more time listening to Ash carry on obnoxiously, to the end result of promply burning next years invitation when it arrived.

No, she decided, she just couldn't have that. She had to find some way to dismiss this issue before it became too much to handle. Misty's scheming proved to be short-lived, though, as Dawn stepped away from her friend and spied who was amidst the assembly over Ash's shoulder. After rapidly collecting her Pokemon, she was away with a squeal. Misty opened her mouth to suck in the required breath to stop Dawn's flight, but before she could, Ash had collected himself from amidst the confusion, and was now astride the steps toward them. Whatever complaint she had was lost when she saw his purposeful gaze, but like before, it lapsed into confusion, as he grabbed Brock by the arm and practically dragged him away, ignoring her entirely.

With a troubled visage of her own, Misty watched Dawn cut through the crowd to her sisters, who were, as always, more than eager to have a new fan, too late to intervene. She couldn't imagine what Ash rounding on Brock meant, but as she watched the two converse with each other just out of earshot, Ash's eyes consistently glancing her way, she knew it couldn't have been anything good.

Brock however, was looking on with nearly as much exasperation as she was, when the young trainer told his story.

"Misty took one of my Pokemon and left me with her Psyduck!" the youth complained in a muted tone.

"That's what I heard," Brock said without much enthusiasm, having been alerted by Forrest earlier in the week and knowing even then where this would lead. Where this sort of thing had led a thousand times in his journeys with the young trainer and their fiery, red-headed companion.

"Well, how is that fair?" Ash asked with a groan.

"I don't suppose that it is," Brock admitted with a sigh.

"Well," Ash said impatiently, "I've been trying to think of a really good way to get her back, but... I'm not sure home I'm going to be able to throw her bike into the deep end of the training pool without her noticing."

Brock, his fears confirmed, dropped his face into an open palm. "I don't think that's the best idea."

Hopeful, Ash's eyes widened. "What, you've got something better?"

Brock ground his brow against the ball of his palm in further distress, "What I mean is," he clarified, "maybe you should just... let it go."

Ash blinked, as though he were at a loss. Wires seemed like they were crossing in his head, as he pointed one hand in one direction, and let his off hand lull about on his wrist helplessly in another. After a moment, he sought clarity.

"Let it go? What, you mean, like, off the diving board? I'm pretty sure she'd notice that!" Ash could hardly see how that constituted a better idea than what he'd come up with. More spectacular, perhaps, but hardly as practical.

"No, I mean, you should try just being nice to Misty." Brock clarified, settling the matter.

This time, Ash just made a face."What, you mean I should be..." Ash murmured, as though the idea were beyond conceptualizing.

"Polite? Courteous? Kind even?" Brock asked pleadingly.

For a long while, Ash didn't say anything, nor did he make any sudden moves, staring back at the breeder's eyes vacantly. Eventually, Brock began to wonder if he'd broken him. "Ash?"

Ash wasn't listening, though. He was thinking of an expression his mother had used once when he and Gary had started coming at odds in their early adolescence. 'Kill him with kindness' she had said, though the tactic had proven ultimately too difficult; he'd eventually succumbed to the same petty name-calling as always. The point was, that it had actually worked for a short time, shaking the impossibly cool Gary off his unflinching game. That's what he'd do!

"Yea, that'll really freak her out." Ash remarked. "When I'm all nice to her and stuff, she won't know what to do!"

The older trainer suspected then that his advice had missed the mark then, but before he could do much to correct it, Ash was already past him and to Misty, pointing wildly to the side parking lot, where he'd left the bike chained up. As the excitable and eerily pleasant youngster lead her onward past Brock, the two older companions shared uneasy shrugs. Brock would've watched them go but his mind was on other things. Namely, finding an excuse to follow Dawn to this photo shoot which he genuinely expected to involve swimsuits. He took the steps down to the awaiting cars, two at a time, rubbing his hands together mirthfully.

Misty, meanwhile was too confused by what was going on and too busy trying to keep her skirt from cresting her thigh, as Ash led her speedily on. Regaining some presence of mind, she roughly shook off his grip, and followed him at a pace more suited to the outfit her sisters had put her in. Turning to regard her, in her sudden thrash, Ash gave her appearance some consideration as well, if only in response to catching her fretting over it. Devoid of its usual yellow, her outfit seemed a little out of place on her, but Ash could easily recognize that she was dressed up. A white half-jacket over a slim black top were well chosen, which was something the often thrown-together ensembles of Misty Waterflower did not often show. That, along with a belted skirt, and simple black flats, rounded everything out in a modern, mature way, that would've went right over Ash's head, were it not being called so blatantly to his attention, with her exaggerated priming.

Ash crinkled his nose. Misty was obviously trying to bait him into giving her a compliment. What was with girls? Why did they always need someone to gush over their clothes? He considered saying something mean or mocking for a moment, such as _"Nice clown shoes."_ or _"Where did you find a belt that big?"_ Frowning, though, Ash remembered what plan of action he'd decided on, and supposed that it would be best just to grit his teeth, and give her what she wanted.

Misty, who of course, had been more concerned with someone catching a glimpse of her underwear, than what Ash thought of her, was a little surprised to glance up and find him staring at her in appraisal. Still, the young trainer tried to pick out something he liked about it, given that he was not all that great at fabrication, and after a while of coming up short, he smiled. It didn't have anything to do with her outfit per se, but he supposed it would do.

"Your hair looks nice," he said, forcing a sweet expression onto his face.

Nearly stunned to the point of physical paralysis, Misty was trapped in her current position for a long moment. She had one hand leveled in an accusing point, to tell him off for dragging her along in the first place, and her mouth locked open in the beginnings of said rebuke. Her hair was down today, something she did not often allow, as her mid-length bangs often got into her face and eyes while she was swimming or training. Though it was not terribly long, in fact being less than shoulder length, it curled naturally underneath her ears and clung to her jaw, giving the illusion of purposeful styling. Ash had only seen it down like that a couple of times, but he did honestly like it that way. She stammered for a reply to the unexpected, if not shocking flattery, or perhaps for the insult she seemed to have lost, but it proved unnecessary as Ash turned away, all too confident in the potential success of Brock's plan, and waved over his shoulder for her to follow. As soon as she was not being surveyed, her hands slapped to her cheeks, in an effort to hide the searing blush that had crept up. Angrily, she stamped her foot to clear her head, then followed, resolutely.

Ash led her to the bike-rack, with a smirk on his face, and then stepped aside so that she could look over the item he'd lead her to. He was pleased greatly when her look of confusion distorted into one of absolutely surprise, then melted into poorly concealed joy. It was her bike, she realized with fervor. She'd expected Ash to lead her out her and show her something gross he'd found on the parking lot pavement, or ultimately lead her into a trap he'd set to gain his promised reprisal. Tempering her happiness with caution, she glanced him and her bike up and down, to make sure he wasn't hiding anything. It didn't seem like he was.

Her excitement bubbled back up from beneath her cynicism, and she flew to him, arms wide, meaning to hug him tightly. Suddenly, though, she stopped short, a vision of Dawn embracing the young trainer tightly knifing into her sensibilities. No, she decided, muscling down the strong desire of her crush with impunity. Her fierce jealousy over watching the younger girl hug Ash tightly, even weighed against her desire to even the score, was more than awkward enough to hold her. What she failed to realized, until her inner struggle was over, however, was that her few short strides had brought her toe to toe with her friend, and she now stood well inside his personal space, leering awkwardly at him. To her horror, Ash seemed just as confused as she was. Rapidly, she glanced around for an excuse.

Escaping smoothly, she grabbed him roughly by his arm, and pulled him aside, out of her direct path, as though he'd simply been blocking her path. Locking her eyes on the bent fork-post, she molded her features into a mask of subdued anger. "What's this?" she asked, rushing past him, and then turning to indicate the damage. She included a gasp for the benefit of the ruse.

"Uh," Ash stammered, "It was sorta like that when I found it."

"I'll just bet," Misty snapped, "Go figure. I should've known that if you were involved, my bike would be wrecked by the time I saw it again." She harrumphed for good measure.

Normally, this was where the fight would've started, but Ash kept his cool, however barely, to the combined surprise of both trainers. Really though, Ash could tell that her fuss was only one part anger, and nine parts bluster. "Sorry. It really was like that when I found it." He offered, again forcing the words out of his mouth, instead of the venomous counter that was trapped in his chest.

Confused, but placated, Misty shut her mouth. She was satisfied that Ash didn't suspect anything, and she didn't want to sound like too much of an ingrate. The fork could be fixed at little to no expense, and more importantly, the bike itself was safe, back in her hands. She'd honestly never expected to see it again, so this was still a marked improvement.

"Thanks, I guess." she offered eventually, trying to restore some civility to her reception of its return. She had been rather surprised (nearly overjoyed, even) to find that Ash had retrieved her bike, damaged though it was, but she was determined not to let it influence her decision-making. She still needed Ash gone. She knew that he deserved a better break than all that, though.

Misty stood, careful not to wipe the grease from her hands onto her skirt, in fact, to keep her blackened fingertips as far from her person as she could. "So do you wanna get this out of the way now, or what?" she questioned simply, hoping to graciously acquiesce to his desire to have his Pokemon returned as some small measure of thanks, or else apology

Not seeming to understand exactly what she meant, though, Ash only spotted the dirt on her hands, and gallantly offered his lucky handkerchief without comment; the one she'd gave him so long ago. Her handkerchief, in truth. Trapped in a memory, she allowed her true emotion at seeing the thing shine through her mask of impatient indifference. A wide, satisfied smile pulled her lips from their forced scowl, and she did not think to hide her blush. A second later, she pulled herself together, diligently. She focused on putting long black streaks into the fabric and reconstructing her expression into one of resigned indignation. It was just as well, since Ash was too busy considering the benefits of the plan to understand what her momentary thrill had meant anyways.

It seemed to Ash, that his plan was working to perfection.

"I meant your Pokemon" Misty clarified, trying to deflect attention from the lingering pinkness in her cheeks, as she handed back the kerchief. "That's why you came here, right? You want Kingler back."

Grinding his train of thought to a halt, the proposed idea gave him considerable pause. He cthought about it for a moment, dropping his wry look to glance down towards his belt in consternation. Really, the thought hadn't been on his mind of late. More the thought of inflicting some vengeance on Misty had brought him here, than wanting his Pokemon back. But, he did suppose that the matter was hardly concluded. Only after a few long moments, did he open his mouth to respond.

"Is Kingler happy here?" Ash asked, as an honest preface to his question. He displayed both hands openly, trying to allay any issue that might be taken.

Misty tilted her head to one side, thinking her own thoughts on the matter. Kingler hadn't shown any dislike at all for her training methods, and had in fact taken to the regiment straight away and with more enthusiasm than some of her own Pokemon, truth be told. If Kingler was unhappy, he certainly had a funny way of showing it. She also knew that what she'd told Kingler before had hit it's mark. And it was true, she knew as well. She really could put Kingler into a far better position to compete than Ash could. Ash was a really excellent trainer, and he was great with Pokemon, but the fact remained that Ash trained and cared for a diverse array of Pokemon, and he could not provide the sort of specialized training she could for a water-type, on a full-time basis. She didn't expect Ash to understand that, so she didn't bother to explain it to him. All Ash would hear would be _"I can train Kingler better than you,"_ and she was certain that he wouldn't care much at all for that explanation, anyways.

Instead, she offered a smile, and reached into the left inside pocket of her half-jacket. Kingler's poke ball leaped from her hand and spat red light between them. "You can ask him yourself," she said simply, as the young trainers crustacean Pokemon appeared before him.

Ash looked over his hard-shelled and sharp-clawed companion, looking every bit as fighting fit and battle-ready as he ever head, with all his love for competition and desire to please his trainer with overwhelming combative vigor and in truth, Ash felt some of the locomotion that the last few days of anticipation had lent to him, throttle down. It was an easy thing to see, having traveled for so long with such an experienced breeder as Brock was. Ash didn't even really pay all that close attention to Brock's frequent anecdotes and asides on the matters of Pokemon care-taking, preferring a more straightforward, if less elegant approach in raising and rearing his own Pokemon; methods more based in the group emotions that often swept him and his oft-changing party of six along, than in hard scientific basis. Still, Ash could see it clearly.

The color and texture of Kingler's hard chitinous covering had changed ever so slightly, since he'd seen the water-type a week ago, from a deep orange to a more carmine hue. The leading edge of his massive, dominant claw gleamed with the oily colors of sharpened shell, honed sharp by practiced, repeated use. The crab Pokemon clicked his claws together rapidly, sounding more like the dry, loud cracking of timbers than the clapping of castanets they had formerly reminded him of. None of those things, however, would've given Ash more pause than what he noted next, however. Deeper than any physical attribute Kingler displayed, Ash noted that the Pokemon already looked tougher, more fierce of spirit, than he remembered. Something like a cheerful smile crossed Kingler's foamy mouth at the sight of Ash's expression. Misty, standing off to the side now, could see that while it was not overly boastful, Kingler did seem proud of the reaction he had elicited in his trainer, and she felt that it was rightly so. Still, though, she did not open her mouth to contest Ash when he asked Kingler if he wanted to leave. Kingler was Ash's Pokemon after all. Not hers.

Tentatively, Ash thumbed the seam on the leg of his jeans. "Do you like it here?"

Ash certainly wasn't ready to admit that there was the possibility that Misty was a better trainer than he was, but he didn't want to sound leading and definitely couldn't deny Kingler's right to seek out what was the best for himself. After all, had he been denied such a right, he'd still be moping around Sinnoh, kicking himself, he was sure. If Kingler was getting better training here, more importantly, if Kingler actually liked it here, more than traveling, Ash knew that he had no right to stop him, or to even suggest that he wasn't fully supportive of Kingler.

He still felt a little upset when Kingler bobbed in a nod. It certainly meant that he was happy and relieved, of course, that his Pokemon was in high spirits, but also, It made what he would have to ask next that much harder.

"Do you want to stay here then?" Ash asked, determined not to put any more weight on the question than what was needed to speak it aloud. Unknowingly mirroring the actions and intent of his own mother, just a few weeks before, Ash did not want to voice his query in such a way that might suggest that a positive answer would hurt his feelings, or pain him in any way.

He closed his eyes and nodded in just the same way his mother had, when he'd told her of his intent to leave as soon as was possible, at Kingler's slow bob of approval. He wouldn't say anything, or do anything to make his Pokemon, and his friend change his mind. Besides, it wasn't goodbye forever. Just for a little while. He still didn't like it, just the same as every goodbye but knowing that did make it easier to slap on the facade, to present the supportive thumbs up, and smile warmly at his Pokemon. "Go for it!" he said, just as much to cement his own decision as Kingler's.

As he watched Kingler's return to his poke ball, he invariably looked up toward Misty, who's return stare made it obvious that she could see past the deceptive presentation he'd just given. Sympathetically, Misty held out the poke ball once more for his consideration. "Look, if you really don't wa-"

"I want what _he_ wants." Ash said with finality that was just a tad sharper than he'd meant it to be, but he forced himself to soften. He had rendered his decision just the same as Kingler had, and he would stand by both. His next words came even easier. "It's okay."

Misty blinked a few times to collect her focus, before returning the poke ball to her jacket. This time, her hand went to the right-hand pocket, and from it she withdrew Kingler's opposite number; the Pokemon she'd truly intended to trade. Gyrados' poke ball felt heavy in her hands as she held it out to him. "Here," she said offering a wry smile, "_this_ is what I said I'd give you, right?"

She watched Ash's eyes flash to the poke ball in her hands and she could see fires aglow in them. He was fantasizing, she knew, about the powerful Pokemon within it, and what it could do for him. And she was right- Ash was practically beside himself with the idea of including Gyrados in his team. So it came as a surprise to both of them when the fires died away, and the young trainer uttered a single word, his slowly extending hand, coming to rest not on the poke ball as she'd expected, but on her wrist, pushing it gently downward.

"No," he said, quietly.

Misty felt herself blinking again, this time more rapidly, as she failed to come to terms with what had been said. She jutted her head forward on her neck, thinking she might've misheard. "Huh?"

"I was thinking, I'd sort of like to train Psyduck, for _real_," Ash stated. "I-if that's alright," he added, after her continued stare of disbelief.

"Er." Misty managed, genuinely taken aback. "Why?"

"Well, It's sort of like how," he paused for a long moment, considering how best to explain. "You can do better for Kingler than I can, because you can train water-types in their own element, with more specific- spessy...spec, uh..."

"Specificity?" She offered, though she didn't see where he was going with this.

"Yea, that," Ash acknowledged quickly. "Well, Psyduck is kind of..." He trailed off, not exactly sure what to say at this point, either. He didn't want to call Psyduck troubled or challenged, but that was sort of what it was. Instead he opted to reconstruct the sentence entirely. "Psyduck has trouble with battles. Because of his headache, right?"

Misty kinked her lips up in a displeased way. They both knew what Ash was getting at. Psyduck was a little touched, by her best estimate, but she couldn't help by love the little quack, as much as he got underfoot with his constant headache. For some reason she didn't really like the idea of a drastic change where Psyduck was concerned, as much as she complained about him. Misty decided to let him continue, in spite of that notion; nodded her accord with his assessment.

Ash's expression magnified into a beaming grin. "I'm really good with stuff like that," Ash said, and they both knew it was hardly a boast. Ash thrived on helping Pokemon surpass their own stigma, and overcome their weaknesses. More than any other facet of his career, he considered this his greatest strength. "I can devote a lot more one-on-one time to Psyduck than you can, because I have fewer Pokemon with me all the time," he mentioned, hoping to make it sound off-handed.

That much was true, she knew. While Ash probably owned far more Pokemon than she did, as a trainer, he was only ever responsible for the direct care of six Pokemon at a time, while she had all of her Pokemon residing with her at the gym, alongside the now not so small collection of her sisters Pokemon whom she frequently cared for. It was easier for her to see the logic behind it, now, admittedly, but she was still uncertain.

Really, she reminded herself. everyone seemed to stand to gain from the arrangement. Ash would get a chance to utilize his greatest aspect as trainer. Psyduck would get a level of training and personal attention that she would be hard pressed to provide alongside the upkeep of the gym. And honestly, as much as she hated to admit it, Psyduck was often what stood between her and pursuing a more rigorous training regiment. A chain could only be a strong as it's weakest link, after all.

Still, a part of her, a strong part of her said 'No!', tugging at her heartstrings in protest. A deep vein of maternal love resided in her, and to that portion of her subconscious, Psyduck was a baby, to be held tightly and protected, from anything and everything. She could deal with the inconvenience, a little voice reminded her. There was no way she could bear to send Psyduck away! A deeply irrational motivation, it welled up so fast that it nearly caused a refusal to fly from her lips before she could think the matter over. Luckily, she managed to forestall the event long enough that it only ever became a clenched hand in front of her chest.

It was a good idea, she told herself. If anyone could be trusted to look after one of her precious Pokemon, it was Ash. Especially Psyduck. Ash didn't have a scrap of patience, normally, but when it came to dealing Pokemon, he was practically a Zen Master.

For her, she knew, it would mean a whole lot less time spent putting on water-wings, and a whole lot more time training all her other Pokemon to the limit. And though she didn't know it, Ash was hoping that maybe, just maybe, if he had a chance to help Psyduck overcome his problems, it would help him over his own hump as well.

Misty swallowed her insecurities on the matter, knowing that they were only that. If she could trust Ash with Gyrados, she could certainly trust him with Pysduck. "I guess that's fine," she said with forced evenness.

Unlike her, Ash showed no such reservations, and pumped his arm rigorously it his side in victorious celebration.

Misty was not the only one perturbed by Ash's jubilation, though. Not far off, a comically large set of eyes peered at them, through convex lenses.

"So what do you think?" Doc asked him, the moment he'd lowered the binoculars from his face. In truth, Holiday had been about to give his opinion on the matter, but now he didn't feel all that inclined to. He favored his impatient partner with an angry glare then shook his head, inadvertently shaking the bush they were concealed in, as well, drawing some glances from the nearby crowd. After a cold second had passed without detection, Holiday let go of a breath and tried not to move too much, lest they cause another rustle in the hedges, and alert the nearby onlookers.

"To early to tell, yet," Holiday offered, finally. "Doesn't look good, though."

They'd done a roundabout and put themselves back on the trail of the young trainer, following their escape from Pokemon Tech, and now were just looking for the sign they'd been told to look for; some indication that Ash had hung up his belt for good. They'd been rather surprised to follow Ash here, instead of shadowing his expected course home. The couldn't be sure of what that meant, yet, but it was no doubt troublesome. Doc moved to his Xtranciever, expecting the need to call the boss and deliver the unfortunate news. Holiday stayed his hand, however.

"Chill, bro." The tall Admin eased. "We can handle this."

Holiday didn't know that his placating motion had caused the bushes to stir again, or that Daisy had come over to peer into their hiding place, much to the bemusement of all.

"Um, excuse me," the eldest Waterflower managed, with a hand strumming her hip. "But do you mind coming out of there? We're inviting the press to the cape now. There's no need to hide in the bushes."

Sensing excitement and intrigue, her sisters were at her side, almost instantly. "Wow, we've got like, paparazzi!" Lily said, delighted.

"We are totally celebrities!" Violet chimed in, as though this event, in and of itself was a solid indicator of her declaration.

Holiday and Doc locked each other in peculiar stares, then took the convenient out. Both stood with embarrassed smiles on their faces and nodded, before extricating themselves from their chosen hiding places. Even though they hadn't planned it this way, soon, having no news-van of their own to climb into, they were graciously swept into the back of a limousine along with all three of the Sensational Sisters, a young Sinnohan girl and her older, spiky-haired friend.

"See," Holiday said with good humor, elbowing his partner. "I told you we could handle this."

Brock, across from them, wasn't nearly so confident with his particular plan. He hadn't exactly expected Ash to be here, after all, and there was no telling how he would take the news. Brock hoped that everything would go off without a hitch, but he couldn't help but suspect that the events of today were going to hurt someones feelings. Tension was not at the same high it had been weeks ago, and if Dawn's welcoming of Ash was any indicator, then things were surely, if a bit tenuously, on the mend.

Ash had indeed seemed surprised to see them, though the matter between him and Misty had him somewhat distracted. How would Ash have reacted if he'd found out why they were really there? If he knew their intent to fill the void he'd left in their traveling party.

He supposed that Ash really had no valid reason to be upset and, in a way, that that was a problem in and of itself. Even if Ash didn't react at all, if he didn't show Max the forthcoming support that the freshman trainer would expect, it would only serve to drag another person into the fray of this melodrama, something he was not keen to oversee. Max would wonder why, at the very least, Ash, the trainer whom he intended to model his career after, did not view his decision to travel with two seasoned partners in a positive light- and that was if Ash didn't out and out explode about it, which Brock had almost every confidence that he would. He was very confident that Ash would have some very strong feelings on the matter, even if he had been the one to depart their company and not the other way around. Indeed, Brock expected Ash to feel a lot of things about his relatively hasty replacement. Betrayal was one of several that came immediately to mind, but happiness was nowhere amongst them. He turned to Dawn.

"I think we should talk to Ash."

"About what?" asked Dawn, overcome with the idea of rubbing elbows with the likes of the two Johto and Kanto Ribbon Cup winners sitting across from her, and thinking, in her haste, that she'd already already spoken with Ash to a suitable extent. "I already talked to him about my Pokemon and everything," she noted, scratching at the side of her hat in the face of Brock's continued stare.

The sudden sight of Lily and Violet Waterflower had disrupted her attention, she realized in embarrassment. She hadn't said anything to Ash about why they were here, or what was going on. Hadn't even said goodbye! Granted, Ash hadn't actually protested, and when she'd glanced back in his direction before getting into the limo, it did seem like he had his hands full with whatever he was talking to Brock's friend about.

Distracted momentarily by that revelation, she turned and pointed at the fast receding figure. "Hey, who is that girl, Brock?" she asked genuinely. "The girl talking to Ash."

Brock blinked for a second, thinking that she was purposefully misleading him for some reason. His answer came out as more of a question. "Thats...Misty?" Apparently, his young friend didn't recognize her from the description he'd given, or even from the close facsimile of Ash's fishing lure she'd seen before. He supposed that things were fairly out of sorts today, with everyone being so dressed up. Misty especially, was almost a different person with her hair down.

Violet and Lily, who'd caught wind of the hushed conversation, spoke across to the traveling pair, from the bench seat on the other side of the cabin.

"That's totally our baby sis."

"She's like, the youngest Waterflower."

Daisy, interjecting sharply on her littlest sisters behalf, found it necessary to add a slight addendum; "Misty is the Cerulean City Gym Leader."

Truthfully, Dawn did not think her shame in the outburst she'd had over the phone could've become more complete, and she tried to keep that behind her. There was the fact that now she'd gone from insulting the integrity of a perfect stranger, to now having insulted the youngest sibling of amazing coordinators, whom she practically idolized, and also a well respected member of the Gym-leaders, a fraternity shared not only by Brock, but many others she respected.

She was very thankful when the breeder from Pewter turned his renewed attention to her, again. "We really need to talk with Ash when we get back."

Dawn nodded. "Well, what should we tell him?"

Doc and Holiday, like any good spies, sat and listened, and did little else besides smile and nod so as to not seem out of place. And so it went, on the short ride to the cape that they overheard everything they could've wanted to hear about Ash's red-headed friend, as the pair batted ideas back and fourth, and Misty's three older sisters commented as they saw fit. As far as Holiday was concerned, Brock and Dawn were next to useless, talking about some other kid named Max, but each and every one of the Sensational Sister's asides, though he recognized them for what they were, mostly the teasing of elder siblings, contained at least a small kernel of truth. Misty's high-strung nature. Her crush on Ash. The importance of today's events. The pieces of the puzzle fit together nicely, as far as they were concerned.

When they arrived at the section of the Cape the Sensational Sisters had cleared for the event, a long stretch of white-sanded beach, the two undercover Nebula thugs made themselves conveniently scarce once more as the remainder of the party were treated to a rather pleasant sight.

Several white tents and awnings were set up, with various tables and chairs underneath them in arrangement, and from every corner, white and blue streamers ran to the ground along the tethers. In front, out near the lapping tide was a glass podium, where they all assumed that someone would be giving a speech.

All in all the setup was pretty classy, but amounted to little more than an outdoor picnic. What really iced the cake, was that out in the surf, roughly twenty yards from the shore was a huge pontoon, on top of which, was constructed a stage, albeit with a circular hole in the center, where the floor gave way to the surf beneath. Like it's land-side accompaniment it was decorated with white and blue; silhouettes of various water-type Pokemon and nebulous shapes that suggested the sea were prevalent on the rather impressive structure.

The design seemed prefabricated, but in truth, the Sensational Sisters, more than a little resourceful, had assembled it on their own. Daisy had collected the necessary components, the party pontoon and diving port, as well as the raw materials for the stage itself. Violet had brought some rather impressive welding and carpentry skills to bare, and Lily had conceptualized and realized the design, putting many hours of work into painting and hanging the scenery.

Most who knew the sisters personally, thought they were a bit on the lazy side, and they probably would've admitted, with the possible exception of Daisy, that they were, wherein things they were uninterested in were concerned. The Sensational Sisters had never had much interest in running the Cerulean City gym, that much was true, but their passion, their true love known as performance, had always brought out the best in them. No one, but no one had ever accused them of putting on a poor showing. Ever. And by extension, none of the three had ever been accused of poor coordinating, either. The Sensational Sister staked their reputation on every show and every appeal.

Brock and Dawn turned to ask the coordinator sisters what exactly the cape was set up for, but they were already being surrounded by the media, who were re-emerging from their trailing vehicles with renewed intensity.

* * *

Ash felt his eyes darting around wildly as he stepped into Cerulean Gym proper, and saw what it had to offer. The complex itself had been one of the larger gyms in the Region on his first visit and now it certainly had to have surpassed even the sprawling Viridian City Gym, in terms of sheer size. The battle center alone contained two fifty-meter pools, complete with diving platforms and shallower wading pools off to either side, in addition to the normal boundary markers and podiums associated with Gymnasium battles.

Even though the intent of this little tour hadn't originally been to entertain Ash, or even really to show off, (merely to get him to stop inundating her with awkward niceties) she did have an immense amount of pride in this Gym and she could hardly keep herself from feeling cheeky. Still, while she doubted that this would actually work, and in spite of all that had happened, she still wanted Ash to leave. So Misty only casually indicated a few items for his benefit: The custom filtration system Professor Oak had designed for her last fall, the sound, lighting and overhead CCTV system that took up the majority of the high, steel rafters, And, as an afterthought, the stadium seating that as of now rested hidden, folded in it's recess within the wall on motorized actuators.

Then she led him down a hallway to the north, into what was, and would soon become even more areas of the gym. Huge banks of glass-fronted tanks that contained rare and interesting water Pokemon on loan from the Cerulean City Aquarium. One in particular, a large, frilled jellyfish Pokemon that wobbled past the front of the tank as he passed, caught Ash's eye. With no hesitation at all, he halted, and flipped out his Pokedex.

"Jellicent, the Floating Pokemon. The fate of the ships and crew that have wandered into known Jellicent habitats remains unknown as all are believed to be sunken, or simply lost. Though it is uncertain, many sailors believe that Jellicent feed on the life-energy of humans."

Ash stifled a small gasp, as he looked back up from the device, to regard the Pokemon, who was now gone from sight, having floated away from the glass. Misty simply laughed, and shrugged. He didn't step away in fright or anything, but she could tell that the boy was on his guard now. Ash had spent a lot of time with a lot of different Pokemon on his journeys, and so while not scared, he knew more than most just how dangerous some could be, in spite of harmless appearances.

"Don't worry, Jellicent is nice enough. It does like to scare trainers that come through, though," she mentioned with a wicked smirk, before pointing at his pokedex. "They're ghost types too and very territorial, so your Dex may still be right."

Misty let that sink in while he continued to regard the now seemingly empty tank. Hesitantly, Ash laid his hands on the ledge and tried to peer into the corner of the aquarium. "Jellicent wont let anyone else in there with her. I have to feed her from the outside and move her out when I clean the tank," Misty shrugged, as though the thought didn't trouble her much.

As another bulbous shape floated by the glass unexpectedly, Ash reared away, startled. "Well, what's that, then?"

Misty smiled, trying to hide her own satisfaction at seeing him shaken. "That's my sister Lily's Jellicent."

"But it looks different." Ash clarified.

"Yeah?" Misty deadpanned. "I mean, you and I look different, don't we?" Misty asked, leadingly, hoping that he could put the rest of the pieces together himself.

"Well, yeah." Ash said, after a moment. "I mean, boys are different from girls." he surmised finally, and Misty held in a guffaw when it seemed like he was saying so for his own affirmation, rather than hers. _This must be a species of Pokemon where the male and female look very different from one another_, he thought. _Sort of like a Gastrodon._ Still, though, something bothered him.

"I thought you said it wouldn't let anyone else in there with it," he remembered.

"Well, this is a special circumstance."

"Why?"

Taken aback, Misty huffed. "Because it's a boy Jellicent, dummy."

"So?" Ash asked, as though the explanation was incomplete.

Misty had already decided she's strangle Ash to death before she would make an analogy for Pokemon mating though, and simply crossed her arms and said nothing, staring openly at him.

"Why would that make a difference to Jellice-" A subtle pink on his cheeks made it all the more difficult to contain a laugh, as he realized why the company of another Jellicent was tolerable mid-sentence. "I guess that makes sense," he admitted finally, with a warbled tone in his admission.

Ash watched the two balloon-like Pokemon converge near the middle of the tank, and float lazily around one another. He noticed that the pink female Jellicent was frillier, and therefore appeared slightly larger than the other. The male, it's arboral veil resembling that of a regal mustache rather than the couture of royal vestment it's counterpart wore, fixed the blue-eye female in his piercing red gaze. Though their movement was not purposeful in any way he could comprehend, otherworldly in both direction and reasoning, the two spun tight orbits around each other, slowly, then rapidly, then slowly again. Clockwise, the courting Pokemon turned at first, then counter-clockwise, then clockwise once more, in a way that was hypnotizing.

He felt a tug on his shoulder, while Pikachu had a cherubic cheek pulled by clasped thumb and forefinger. "Jeeze, ever heard of a thing called privacy?"

"Huh," Ash answered stupidly, while Pikachu still sat mesmerized by their dance. Misty was hauling them away, just a few seconds later, towards the area where the gym was undergoing expansion. She led them through a door, into the half-constructed northern wing of the complex. Feeling the transition from the cooled air of the inside, to the return of the tropic breezes of the coast, Ash guessed that this portion of the structure did not yet have complete walls.

They came out into a huge, skeletal construction of steel and concrete bigger than any they'd seen as of yet, but with distinct features that she quickly pointed out, careful not to step out into the work area itself, wherein they would need hardhats and vests.

"Working on one great big performance pool in here." she indicated, pointing to the deep pit in the floor, half-filled in with concrete with the beginnings of a plastic retention wall on the far side for subsurface viewing. "High-rise seating." Ash could see clearly the cut-away, rising levels of steps that lined all sides of the huge room, which theater-style seating would soon occupy. "And they haven't started on it yet, but there's going to be an underwater viewing dome, through there." Ash followed the line of Misty's finger as she pointed to a huge circular passage-way that seemed to lead into the floor, to the south of the huge open pit that would become the pool. "So people can watch the Pokemon from underneath the water."

Ash didn't bother denying that he was impressed. He and Pikachu regarded the construction site and tried to picture the ambitious plans brought to reality. Even without the help of their imagination, the undertaking alone was more than a little humbling. After turning and sharing some words with his partner, Ash nodded respectfully toward Misty. "You've put a lot of hard work into this Gym."

"Of course I have." Misty said with a heaved breath, taking the declaration as a presumptuous lack of faith. Normally, Ash would've been all too ready to rise to the occasion, even past his own sincerity, but that would've ran contrary to his plans after all. Instead, he let out his sudden desire to argue as a strange laugh, which caught her completely off guard, yet again.

"Of course you have," he repeated warmly, offering nothing else on the subject but a smile. Misty felt her face heat up as she stared at him dumbfounded and Ash, smirking, self-satisfied Ash, struggled not to maniacally wring his hands.

Changing the subject, Ash turned on his heels, and walked back toward the main complex, past his stunned guide. "So, I told you what I've been doing, since you saw me last."

Misty, tonguing the inside of her cheek in uncertainty, followed him. They worked their way back through the exhibits and training areas, back to the main foyer. "What have you been doing?" he

_Why do you care?_ Misty considered asking, with a huff of frustration. Two parts of her were at war now. A large, loud-mouthed part of her wanted, necessitated Ash's departure. Having him here right now was a risk to her career that she didn't need. Ash had a knack, a real penchant for digging up the worst kind of trouble. Trouble she could do without. _Ash can come back another day,_ that part of herself reminded her, _just send him on his way!_

The other, albeit a quieter part of her, was somewhat more deeply seated, and every bit as insistent. Mostly because she wanted, actively desired to listen to it. She didn't really want to send her best friend away. She'd honestly wanted him to come back to see her, even if she'd preferred it not be today. That was what this was all about, after all! _Don't you dare!_ The tiny voice shouted _Ash brought your bike back, and he's been nothing but nice to you. You should be ashamed of yourself!_

Misty rubbed the back of her head, and frowned. It was pretty unusual for Ash to be so nice to her, wasn't it? Ash was profoundly kind, and a sweet a person as you could ask for, really, but they brought out the worst in each other, at times. Still, it wasn't exactly like he'd never been this nice. Just not all at once, and not nearly this complacently. Ash was the impulsive type, and that meant that if he had something nice to say, he said it just as readily as he would insult, and just as suddenly. His behavior was more than a little manic. Still, she couldn't say that she didn't like it, even if that was probably what was bothering her the most about his presence. Maybe he was just in a really good mood. She sort of hoped that was it.

Confusingly enough to Ash, she let out a tiny growl of frustration, as she shunted aside her internal debate and led him outside once more. She told him about how the last week had become a whirlwind, what with her having to take time off to come and give him a piece of her mind. She was surprised that he didn't offer sharp rebuttal, even offered to help wheel along her bike, as they walked around the northern face of the Gym, towards Misty's house. She let him, of course. She finished the recollection of all her administrative duties in preparing for the upcoming gym event, a little bothered by how short a summary it proved to be, without any back and forth argument to lengthen its retelling. She glanced over nervously, but Ash didn't seem bothered at all. When he sensed that she was done telling her story, he just nodded, and smiled, as though he was quite pleased. Between them as they strode up the driveway, the wheel rubbed noisily against the inside of the bent fork, but the silence was so uncomfortable that Misty found herself jingling her keys in her pocket, just to avoid talking, long before she withdrew them and opened the automatic garage door.

"Lift it up and put it on the bike-rack, would you?" Misty said, pointing to a set of rubber-coated shepard hooks hanging from an open rafter near the back wall, just beside her punching bag and weight-set.

Ash eyeballed it. The hooks themselves were at least seven feet off the floor, not so easy a height for him, to be honest. The bike itself was light and that was a definite plus, but he would practically need to stand on his tip toes, to hook the rims of the wheels over them, all without dropping the bike or falling over. He should have complained, should have groaned about how it was her bike, and how she could put it up herself with her freakishly long arms and ridiculously tall legs if she wanted it up so damn high. Under any normal circumstances, he most certainly would have. The huge rise he got out of the face Misty made when he flashed a huge smile, and turned to wheel the bike over, seemingly pleased with the idea of doing her the favor paid the price of the task and more, though.

"No problem."

He was glad she quickly excused herself from the garage, because this time, he failed to hold in his laughter. A long snort turned into wracking chuckles and eventually, he felt himself crying in mirth at how beautifully Brock's plan was working. Misty didn't know what the hell to do with him behaving so out of sorts, it seemed! Ash rarely, if ever seemed to have a leg up in their back and forth game of friendly antagonizing and right now he was loving it.

"Pikapi?" Pikachu queried, seemingly confused by his trainer's reaction to the goings on, evidently failing to find the humor in it.

Ash just smiled and waved the rodent off, before getting control of himself again. He heaved the bike up and thought for a moment that he would get it on the first try, but a snag on his sweatshirt stopped him short of the mark by a few inches. As he tried a few more times, Misty stood dumbfounded on the opposite side of the threshold, door sealed behind her. She stared into the empty living room, and rubbed the side of her face. Something was off here. She knew it. She closed her eyes and tried to think. Tried to replay the last half hour in her head. What was she missing here? Ash was not this polite. Not this nice. Not this... She felt the corner of her mouth curl up when his huge smile, his toothy, hot-shot grin that she'd seen so many times since he'd shown his face today come prominently to mind. Through her fingertips she felt the heat of blood rushing under her cheeks yet again. Angrily, she tried to massage away the blush, determined that it would be today's last, before storming up the stairs to get her notes.

Luckily for Ash she was too preoccupied to hear the series of muffled thuds and crashes coming through the heavy garage door, as he either overshot and bumped the wheels hard into the rafter, or failed to reach far enough and had to overcompensate to keep his balance, bringing the bike back down to the floor again hard.

"Help me out, would ya?" Ash asked, indicating the hooks to his partner, who rapidly complied, taking the trip from floor to rafter in four rapid springs: one to the back of Ash's leg, then to his shoulder, next to the post of the slowly and shakily rising bicycle, and finally, to a perfectly balanced perch upon the beam where Ash needed him.

From there, it was simple to steer the front wheel into place with a bump of his jagged tail Ash got it close.

"Thanks, buddy." Ash smiled up at his friend, before easily putting the much easier rear wheel into place. "You're the best."

The trainer held out his arms, and let Pikachu jump down into his grasp. He wondered, as he and his Pokemon shared a moment of simple laughter together, what sorts of cool stuff he could do if he had a tail. His balance would probably be so amazing, he could climb telephone poles and walk along the wires. Jump from hood to hood on moving traffic, easy. Maybe he could even hang from it like a Mankey! That'd be awesome. His thoughts of swinging from limb to limb with the Primeape was cut short though, when something heavy clinked to the ground. He screwed up his face as he caught himself staring into the distance, and snapped his gaze down to it.

Misty's bike-lock. Letting Pikachu retake his typical perch, Ash knelt to pick it up. He tried to put it back over the saddle, but it kept wanting to fall off, and he couldn't figure out how to get it to stay up. Besides, at that point Misty was already calling his name from inside the house. Without thinking, he threw the heavy chain over his head and headed through the door to see what she was yelling about.

He stopped himself from snarling "What?" and instead managed a meager "Yep?"

"What are you still doing in there?" Misty asked, with the exact inflection he'd strained to avoid.

"Just, uh, putting your bike up." He coughed a little to clear his throat.

"I've been upstairs for ten minutes," she explained in a deadpan that was quickly becoming tiresome.

Ash kept his cool, though. "Is that so?" He must've been daydreaming about having a tail for longer than he thought. "Sorry about that."

Misty's frown let him know that he'd made a judgment error. Sorry twice in one day was just too much for her to buy. He'd laid it on too thick.

"Is there something going on with you today?" She asked suspiciously, favoring him with a lengthy glance over her raised nose.

Ash scrambled desperately for a reply. Something that would bail him out, but still keep his charade intact. Impulsively, as though guided by something that he did not consciously understand, his hand lurched out to catch hold of the white pamphlet tucked between a stack of index cards and her keys clutched in her left hand. The movement was surprising, but he knew he had very little hope of taking it from her before she stopped him. Instead of trying to steal it, he just gave it a tug, to see what it said. As expected, she pulled it away from him. Not before he could read it, though.

"Maybe I should ask you that," he stated smugly, indicating the piece of paper. "What's that for?"

With a groan of displeasure, Misty ushered him out the front door, and did her best to ignore him as they left the Waterflower home, to return to the Gymnasium and rendezvous with her sisters following the soon approaching conclusion of the photo-shoot.

"The Magikarp Catching Invitational." Misty found herself explaining with a shrug, trying not to draw any unnecessary attention to the issue, when Ash's curiosity did not relent. "We've been holding it here for the past few years. It's just a little thing my sisters put together." The Cerulean Gym Leader waved her hand back and forth, flapping the pamphlet about, as they entered the lobby "There's a fishing competition and then my sisters put on a water-show."

"Cool. Sounds like fun." Ash said after digesting her words for a moment, once they stepped into her adjoining office. She expected him to turn and start digging in his backpack for his collapsible rod, proving positive her suspicion that he'd only actually heard the word 'competition'. "The last time I went fishing was almost six months ago, with Brock and Dawn."

Misty heaved a long sigh, as she plopped into the chair behind her desk, relieved to find that he was still standing patiently, but still unhappy with the way things were going. "Ash," she muttered. "It's an Invitational, so...you sort of have to be invited."

"Oh." Ash blinked for a second, then unperturbed, he shrugged as though remembering something. "Well, no problem, just invite me."

She pushed her index and thumb across the bridge of her nose. "Ash," She rubbed furiously. "You're not listening to me."

"Hmn?" He lifted his head, slightly, and bit his bottom lip, to display that he was all ears. Pikachu likewise perked, mimicking his trainers pose with little fault.

"This is an Invitational Event! It's held for fund-raising purposes. A lot of well-off people will be there, and we're hoping that the Gym will see big time contributions from some of those in attendance." She let her hand fall into a swaying position at her side, as her other took up position on her waist, completing the expectant look/tapping foot/hand to hip trifecta.

Ash's eyes widened, but he didn't say anything, or give any indication that he understood. "So...you want me to make a donation?" He scratched his head. "Is the Gym hurting for dough, or something?"

She tilted her head back and groaned. "No, Ash. The Gym isn't hurting for anything." She looked around briefly, trying to construct a scenario that he would understand. "Surely you've noticed that we're able to do quite a bit more than just run a League Gym around here, though, right?" She held out her hands toward the additional wings of the building, the sections that hadn't been here during his first go-around. "The aquarium exhibits, The water-shows my sisters have always put on, and all that?"

He tilted his head slightly in either direction, and then nodded, not really sure what difference it made, but willing to agree just for the sake of his plan. "Well...yea." He looked down at Pikachu who shrugged in response, igniting a short, whispered discourse Misty couldn't hear, but suspected had something to do with her.

"The money the League provides for the upkeep of the Gym doesn't cover any of that." She stated, crossing her arms. "So the money has to come from somewhere. My sisters put on these sorts of events, and use their fame and popularity to draw in high-profile attendees willing to be benefactors of these additional activities and facilities. Since those things help make the Gym a fun part of the Cerulean City community, and more importantly, very successful, It's my job to make sure that these events run as smoothly as possible."

"Bene...fact..." Ash looked at her with a clouded expression, filling her with a desire to strangle him. She should have known better than to use a word with more than three syllables in front of him. He waved his hands, dismissing his current train of thought, before she could act on that desire, though. "So, what you're saying, is that, I should ask your sisters, then?" He asked, hopefully.

_No. What I'm saying, is that you should NOT go!,_ she thought angrily, _You milling around, trying to brush elbows with the likes of Champion Lance and scaring all the Magikarp away with your big MOUTH isn't going to help my Gym build any rapport, you numbskull!_

"Ash, why don't you just-" She began, formulating a way to put it to the trainer gently that she'd rather he not come, but was cut short, as she opened her eyes to find him gone, the sound of sneakers and Pikachu paws echoing from around the corner. "ASH?"

She barreled after the intrepid trainer, but was too late, as she came across Ash standing in the lobby, talking to her sisters as they re-entered the building.

"-And so, she said I should ask you guys if it was okay," Ash finished, just as she was about to cut him off. She opened her mouth to launch a hideous rebuke, but was cut across by the voice of her eldest sister, Daisy.

"Like, of COURSE your boyfriend can go, Misty!"

Misty felt her eye twitch in flash-boiling rage, as she unconsciously made claw-like motions at her side. She was going to snap, she knew it. She just had to decide who to scream at first! If It wasn't Ash driving her up the freaking wall, it was one of her sisters, constantly sticking their noses where they didn't belong. She locked her eldest sibling with a death glare so powerful, that she, like her namesake in the face of a dry blast of heat, should have withered away. Daisy, who was far too resistant to such ploys, just winked at Ash, and stuck her tongue out at her hot-headed baby sister, before departing.

Misty thought to turn and follow her three older sisters, as they left with giggles and jeers, to do one final rehearsal in the pool before the event began, or at least round on Ash and scream at him until he shattered to pieces, but three others walked into the lobby before she could, leaving her standing there dumbfounded.

"Look who we found!" Brock quipped, his voice slightly edged by what Misty recognized as nervousness. Max had spotted them out on the beach on his way into town and joined up with them, before they'd had the chance to lay the groundwork for this reunion, no doubt.

Dawn stepped aside then, to reveal a young boy, who stood taller than Ash had last seen him. To Ash, aside from the hair, which was a somewhat darker shade than Dawn's, Max seemed a younger reflection of himself. His glasses were just a big and thick as they had ever been, but it was Max's attire that seemed the most strikingly new; nearly an exact replica of his own traveling outfit through most of his trip through Hoenn, though it was comprised of articles somewhat more green than his had been. Max had shot up considerably, and now nearly looked Ash in the eye as the pallet trainer approached and observed him.

The grin that crossed Ash's face was one of true felicity, as he grasped the newly ten-year-old boy's shoulders with gloved hands and gave him a firm shake. "Max!"

Max laughed, and returned the gesture, just as thrilled to see the ace trainer, as Ash was to see him.

Brock and Dawn's collective sigh of relief caught in their throats as Ash's curiosity instantly took a dive for worst case scenario. "What are you doing here?" he questioned Max.

The younger trainer blinked once, the action comically enlarged by the thick lenses of his spectacles. "I'm here to start my journey. May called me from the road, and asked me if I wanted to travel with Brock and his new friend Dawn." Max said with a smile, which might've seemed to be growing on his face, as it slowly drained from Ash's.

"She said she couldn't because she was already busy, but that I should definitely go, if I wanted to become a strong enough trainer to battle you." Max puffed out his chest. "I haven't forgotten, you know. You said we'd battle once I became a trainer."

Ash hadn't said anything through Max's explanation, and didn't say anything following it, for several seconds. Max didn't seem like he was bothered, but Dawn and Brock over his shoulder were beginning to sweat.

"So, _you_ three are going to be training together, now?" he said at last, "Why didn't anyone tell _me_?" and Max, thankfully mistaking his connotations for some more along the lines of the recipient of a surprise party, smiled broadly.

"That's the plan! We're going to travel through Johto, just like you did!" the junior trainer said confidently, taking out his Poke balll, the one that held the Raltz he'd promised to take with him years ago and displaying it prominently. It was a Nest Ball; a birthday gift from his sister. "What do you think Ash?"

Ash sat staring at the trio, and Max thought it in earnest consideration but in truth, he was paying them very little attention.

He felt stupid. Ash really didn't need to be told why nobody had told him. He knew exactly why. It was the same reason nobody'd told him that Paul had won the Sinnoh League tournament. He was easy to slight right now and he was aware of that. Perhaps more self-aware now, than he'd ever had to be. But still, he felt a roiling anger, and beneath it, a wounded, saddened feeling. Deeper still, a sensation of acute fear gripped him, and he could not shake any of it away. He was angry that they had so quickly come up with another friend to travel with. Angry that they had so quickly found something that worked for them, while he was still going on the words of Gary Oak, and grasping for strings in the dark. It was stupid and ugly and unfair and everyone in the room knew it, some even so obviously expecting it, that he felt no guilt at all for feeling it. He was also sad. Though that feeling too was unfair and rash, their admission hurt him, honestly. That they would even _want_ to travel with someone else, aggravated such childish sensibilities that were now laid bare like painful nerve-endings in the sudden turmoil of his life. And the fear, like tiny ice-cube in his gut, insisted that perhaps his own uncertainties, his own misgivings about leaving them behind and going his own way had been a mistake, or worse, the pair had been waiting for him to leave, in order to draft more preferred companionship. That perhaps was the most irrational thought of the bunch, but he was hardly rational right now.

He could see Brock bracing for the worst, and Dawn looking worried, and that just made him even more upset. Max was looking as confused as he would probably ever let on to being, as he clutched tightly to his lone poke ball and still, Ash felt his jaw unhitching without his consent. He would tell the two turncoats exactly what he thought of their new plan. Tell the rookie trainer just exactly what he could expect with two such rotten friends, and then maybe, just maybe, he could stop himself, before the told Max exactly what would lay at the end of his fruitless and pointless career, if he intended to mirror it after Ash's own! Even though he was certain that he could not stop himself, something did prevent his outburst. Stepping in sharply, Misty crossed just far enough into Ash's periphery, that he could see her strong look of disapproval.

"I think that's great, Max." she said simply, careful to shape her features back into a warm smile for Max's sake, when she turned to face the trio across from him. She was also careful to keep her stance relatively wide, and unobtrusive, so that nobody would notice that she was standing on Ash's foot. "Don't you?" she asked him, without looking back.

Ever susceptible to a push in the right direction, Ash shut his mouth. He knew he was just getting bent out of shape, and that that he had no reason, no right to be as upset as he truthfully was, he had known that. He'd just gotten so...so... He sighed. It didn't matter anymore. It was done and over with. Slowly, almost timidly, he nodded his head, and everyone's obvious sigh of relief, along with Max's intense grin, made the feelings dissipate somewhat. "Yea. Great, Max," he said finally and with true, if reluctant honesty.

Misty glanced back and him and chose to offer him only a neutral expression and the relief of stepping off of his foot, though he didn't seem to notice either. There was a look on his face made her very afraid that he was going to cry. It was not immediately apparent, underneath the facade of encouragement he was showing his old traveling companions (miserable and incomplete though it was), but the bitter feelings were still very evident to her and probably to Brock as well. Fortunately, it was then that the eldest male pointedly chose to remind them that they were on a very tight schedule and needed to be off. Whether it was out of actual necessity or identical fear, she didn't know. Dawn and Max both raised voices of complaint, of course. Dawn whined that she had hoped to see the water-show later in the day and Max, of course, still had a battle with Ash on his mind.

Brock soothed them both quickly, by reminding Dawn that their hasty pace had been necessitated by her to begin with, and likewise reminding Max that it would be best if he caught a few more Pokemon yet, before going up against a seasoned trainer such as Ash. Dawn grudgingly agreed and Max, having heard hints from her sister that Ash was not in the best of mindsets at the present and appreciating what was happening here for what it truly was, offered very little resistance. One by one, they approached Ash, offering words and tight hugs, and with each passing well-wisher, Ash's plastered on mask became less and less stable.

"No need to worry, right Ash?" Dawn teased, wrapping him in the same tight-by necessity embrace she had earlier, encircling his wide-set shoulders in her thin arms and squeezing reassuringly. "Wish me luck, though!" She requested in excitement that Ash failed to convincingly match when they shared a signature high-five. "And you too!" she cried over her shoulder on her way out. Ash nodded.

Max was next and though his hug was considerably more punctuated and reluctant, their handshake following was more convincing. Misty recognized that Max wanted to be something like Ash's rival at this point in his life, and so it would not do to go hugging him. They had to act tough and manly in front of one another if they were to be rivals, after all. Typical boys. "We'll meet up and have that battle sometime later, Ash! Count on it!" the younger boy offered in parting. Ash only nodded.

Misty thought that Brock would have something wise or eloquent to say in parting, but instead, Brock had Ash off the floor in a crushing hug and shook him powerfully, wet droplets dotting the corner of his eyes. Ever the parent figure, it seemed like this parting, the actual face-to-face departure was taking a heavier toll on him than on the young trainer. Still, though, she could see Ash gripping him back just as tightly, in farewell. "Take care of yourself Ash!" Brock warbled. Ash smiled, but again, only nodded when he was put back on his feet.

She followed the departing trio outside, where they all regrouped with one another on the steps as Ash lingered in the lobby. She figured that he would need a little time alone and so she tried not to look back at him through the glass doors. When she'd descended the steps she and Max shared a wave, while Brock and her patted each other on the arm in silent recognition of what the other had done to smooth the situation over. Curiously enough, Dawn hesitated to walk away, waiting until the others took a few steps off, to stand within range of the Cerulean Gym Leader. Misty wasn't really sure what to expect.

"Ash is pretty upset," Dawn noted, with a clarity that Misty had not come to expect from the young coordinator, given their short but turbulent history with one another.

Misty wanted to say something sharp then, to the younger coordinator. Tell her to _"Let me worry about it. You've done enough,"_ and cast the matter aside, but the sheer honesty of the girl's next statement caught her guard and stole her callous deflection.

"I know you'll look out for him," Dawn said confidently. She had nearly begun the sentence as a request but then decided against it, when she'd caught Misty unconsciously looking over her shoulder towards the lobby.

It was Misty's turn to say nothing and nod. She didn't feel the blush rush to her face this time but there was a warmth in her chest that brought a smile there instead.

"I owe you an apology," Dawn said after a long silence paused between them, "for how I acted."

This time Misty did reply sharply, shaking her head and regaining her composure. "_Nah_," she offered simply, before changing the subject. "You battle any?"

Dawn shrugged noncomittally, not really having expected to have the tables turned so sharply. Technically, she battled all the time. Battling was part of the appeals process, after all. Still, the sort of thing Misty was talking about was something she'd only done just a handful of times. "A little," she admitted, certainly not wanting to sound so versed in the matter.

"You owe me one of_ those_, then," Misty said while poking the smaller girl in the chest with an extended fingertip. "You and Max have all year to train," she added boastfully, shaking a thumb between herself the glass door behind her, as if to indicate Ash.

Dawn frowned at first, but then smiled when she saw the friendly smirk on the older girls face. Each regarded her counterpart as though sizing the other up. Perhaps even more so than Ash and Max, Misty and Dawn had firmly cemented their position with one another, here and they both felt it keenly, as they left each others company.

Misty waved the trio into the distance before turning around. She let out a profound sigh upon coming back inside, though. She didn't find Ash in as nearly a fragile, emotional state as she might've imagined, but still, it was easy to tell that he'd lost all of...whatever it had been that had him acting so precocious earlier. He was sitting deflated in a stuffed chair typically used by awaiting challengers, and though he was not teary-eyed, his visage was locked into a contemplative forlorn stare that seemed to bore through the opposite wall. She stood there, for a long while, just watching him, seemingly so unaware of anything around him, one hand absently patting Pikachu in his lap, the other lethargically fingering the seem of the chairs upholstered arm. Just when she was going to open her mouth to tell him off for moping around her gym, he told her exactly what she'd been wanting to hear all day. Exactly what she'd been telling herself to accomplish since she'd seen him.

"I'm gonna go ahead and leave too," Ash admitted somberly, chancing a glance her way before slowly standing and making his way to the door. Like with his other three friends, he nodded, simply because he didn't have the heart to say goodbye. Then, he just trudged away.

Misty's pride in herself was no small thing. No easily overturned stone, being more like a mountain in proportion. She supposed that it was chiefly her pride that made her want to dispense of Ash and his friends. _Her_ friends. Just so they would have no chance to embarrass her, which Ash, and they, like him, were all so prone to do. Without them here, she could be just as professional, and mature as she was expected to be, without having to deal with Ash's constant trouble-making, Brock's constant creepiness and whatever flavor of distractions Max and Dawn would be bringing to the table. That's what her good sense had told her, and that's what her pride had likewise demanded. She had responsibilities to fulfill, and reputation to uphold. Her career, unlike theirs, depended on more than just day-to-day traveling from place to place. People remembered her and the things she did. For Ash and his troupe, it was okay if they did something that made them look like fools in a particular place. The next day, they would move on. If something went wrong at the Invitational, she would have to deal with the consequences and continue to, through tomorrow and next week, maybe next month and possibly much much longer. This wasn't a game, this was her_ life._

Now though, she could see the severity of that lie, and what it would cost her, if she stuck to it.

Ash had left _his_ friends and now they, finally coming to terms with that, had left _him_. Who was the more miserable? Who'd been stung more? They, being forced to move on, or him, knowing that they _had_? No, she told herself, one day, that sort of thinking would've gotten her into the same trouble. Today, she supposed, that if she had sent them all away, they would have gone, and she could finish her business in peace. Which would've been good and all, until she wanted them to come _back_. And that, in truth, had never taken long. As much as she loved her job, it did make her pretty lonely sometimes. As it was, she was pretty certain she wouldn't see Brock, Dawn and Max again until the end of the training season, maybe a little longer than that, with the coordinating overlap. And if she sent Ash away now, who even _knew_ how long it would be before he showed his face again? He was always traveling, always moving ahead and she guessed that eventually, this melancholy that had fallen over him, would have no choice but to turn itself into wanderlust. If she sent Ash away, like she'd told herself to, if she let him walk away now, there was a good possibility that his next visit would be orders of magnitude more distant than his last, if it _ever_ came.

Her hand snapped out to intercept his arm as he strode past her, catching the smaller trainer and spinning him about to face her.

She really had wanted to say something nice at first. Something that might make him change his mind and maybe flash a smile at her, but that idea alone made her mouth dry up, so for several seconds, she was just standing there holding his arm, staring purposely at him, trying pitifully to put together what she wanted to say.

Ash's eyes continued to widen and gradually, became a look so incredulous that she exploded, both in response to his mocking look and to hide her own flustered state. "After you made such a fuss to get yourself invited, you're just going to _up and leave_?" she roared into his face. "I don't _think_ so!"

* * *

A/N: Oh, the angst! I gotta turn this failbus around for Ash. Even _I'm_ starting to feel bad, here.

Yes, I know this took forever and it was mostly due to laziness. So, if you want an apology for it, here it is: The next chapter is almost finished. As in, I decided at the last minute, to split this chapter in half, and post it as a two-parter.

Also, if that was way too little Max for you, (and rest assured, it was for me as well) fear not. He'll get some more screen time eventually, I promise.


	11. Chapter XI

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Ash grumbles his way through the Invitational, and Team Nebula tries to bring it down around everyone's ears. Meanwhile, trouble begins to brew in distant lands. Will it strike closer to home? How much danger are the Sensational Sisters really in? Will things ever turn around for our hero?

A/N: This one was a LOT of fun for me.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XI**

"Twist Ending"

It was really professional and all that. Made her sound plenty mature with her "I'd like to thank everyone for coming," and her "this was all made possible by contributions from the Cerulean City community." Truthfully, her discipline and concentration were pretty impressive, he guessed. He wasn't sure that he'd be able to get up in front of so many people and talk, at least about anything anyone would be interested in listening to, for as long as she had, and he certainly wasn't sure he could be as charismatic about it, what with Misty getting the whole gathered crowd to laugh at her joke about Seaking. Still, there was a limit to how much of this crap he could sit through.

Ash was still fuming, and as of yet he hadn't found anything constructive or worthwhile to do. Not that he was looking all that hard. He'd spent most of his time so far, kicking the sand underneath his table and making a big ditch.

Pikachu bumped his arm, from the table, making his head wobble on the perch of his hand. He shifted his glum look into a halfhearted smile, at least for his friends benefit, and tried to at least look at what was going on. Yet, his mind wandered blankly, as he sat watching Misty wrap up her speech and bow out, to the general commencement of the fishing competition all around him. He hadn't even pulled out his fishing rod yet. He blew out a loud sigh that turned to a whine and then to a loud groan, as rummaging through his backpack, to pull out his pole made him reconsider the events that had transpired. All the way back to two weeks ago.

The sort of crap he'd put them through, there was no doubt he deserved this. He'd been the one to disband their party, after all. So then why did he feel so miserable? It certainly wasn't because he had wanted them to stay separated or to disintegrate entirely, and he definitely wasn't mad at Max any more than he could be at Brock and Dawn.

It was just that honestly, he'd hoped...

Ash cut that thought short, bringing his hands to the top of his head in frustration.

He'd never even asked them why they were _here_. He'd just assumed that they were here for _him_. He'd hoped, however ignorantly, that without saying so, he could just admit he was wrong, and re-including himself in the group. Or maybe he had hoped that they had decided to come and follow him anyways, in spite of all that had occurred. He wouldn't have objected to either. Of course he'd had his misgivings from the beginning, but he'd realized even more over the past several weeks, just how hard it was to be on the road alone. Pikachu's support was not inconsiderable and likely the only thing keeping him together, but without Brock and Dawn, he just felt like every bump in the road was that much harder, every hill was that much higher and every defeat was that much more devastating.

But they hadn't been here for him. They'd been there for Max. In a moment of weakness when he'd wanted to believe that he would be given an easy reprieve and be allowed fall backwards, exhausted, into the outstretched arms of his friends, there was already someone in that place. Now, here he was flat on his back, with none to blame but himself, as usual.

Unsure if he was sad, angry or just stupid, he ripped his fishing pole from the backpack and stood, deciding that anything would be better than just sitting here.

Misty had been trying not to watch him as she delivered her presentation address for the event, thanking all of the sponsors and local benefactors who'd contributed towards the event itself for their time and effort, and outlining the days events. She had even consciously avoided glancing through the area he sat in, when mentioning the names of a few more prestigious attendees. Now that she dismounted the podium and caught sight of him, still sitting on the bench where she'd left him, she frowned deeply.

It was against her better judgment, but she kindly and gently tried to deflect the lingerers who'd stuck close to the podium to speak with her after the crowd's departure. She wanted to go over to her friend, but there were just _so_ many. With each one, she smiled, thanked them for their time, and excused herself before they ramped up into anything too serious, on account of something pressing. By the time she was done, and emerged from the crush of blocking bodies, she'd lost sight of him on his low-speed departure to the shoreline. She was surprised at how hard he was to pick out without a hat on. As she set out to locate her lugubrious friend, though, someone caught her arm. She thought that maybe she'd been a bit to short with someone on her way through, but she was surprised when she turned to face her two youngest siblings.

"Like, where ya goin', Misty?" Violet asked with a special middle-sister sneer that Misty had long associated with trouble.

Because of that, she had a solid notion that she was about to hear something she didn't like before Lily even opened her mouth to say. "Sis, we totally need a favor."

* * *

"So we plant secret love letters from Misty to you all over the place," Doc explained, "Ash finds them, gets helly jealous, and has a total meltdown. You know how much he hates you."

"Kid's as thick in the head as a Cranidos," Holiday reminded him simply, as he sat reclined in the rowboat. "Even if that plan, however improbable, were to actually work, Ash doesn't seem like the kinda kid who's interested in girls, if you dig."

Doc wasn't sure he did, exactly, but he nodded to keep the conversation moving along. It was pointless though, since Holiday just prompted him for a new idea. "Besides: ew. Try again."

Doc frowned, thinking as he pulled hard at the oars. Suddenly he had an idea. "We kidnap one of the Sensational Sisters!"

"For what?" Holiday drawled, rolling his eyes.

Doc popped his eyebrows suggestively. "For whatever we want!" He laughed.

"That doesn't really help us with the kid, though, does it?" Holiday deadpanned.

"I guess not, Doc admitted, though now he was wondering Holiday, and not Ash who wasn't the type who seemed interested in girls. Doc didn't exactly have much fancy for their thick accents and pampered sensibilities, either, but the two Nebula admin had just watched the nubile trio prance around for almost an hour in barely enough swimsuit to have sensibly covered one woman, let alone three.

Still, though, if there was something in Holiday that was impressed, he didn't show it. "So then think, what should we do?"

Doc gave the rowboat another solid push through the water with a powerful synchronous heave of the oars.

"Why don't we just kick the shit out of him, and tell him to go home?" Doc said simply.

"Now you're usin' them marbles," Holiday said lazily. "Still no, though."

"Why not?" Doc asked, a little surprised.

"Don't get me wrong, I think that's a great idea." Holiday shrugged to emphasize his point. "Obviously, that's why I thought of it when we were first given this whole assignment." He gave Doc a rather contemptible look, as if to suggest that the notion was hardly an original thought.

"But still, we're bound to operate within certain rules, here." Holiday made a showy gesture, as if to say that his thoughts were mostly to be in keeping with the standards of villainy. "Stupid though it may be, the Boss told us to discourage him, _without_ hurting him _or_ confronting him."

"Seems like you break the rules every so often," Doc observed.

Holiday shrugged. "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission," he quoted philosophically, though both were well aware that Holiday rarely asked for either. "And hey, if it comes down to the wire, sure, we'll rough him up. Who's gonna know? But for now, we're kickin' it in a beach paradise full of suntanned bitches in bikinis. The gig's had it's perks, so why rush it?"

Doc wasn't exactly sure that erased a full day's worth of being trapped in a collapsing mountain, or running from both the police and the better part of corporate Kanto, but as he glanced toward the distant shoreline, he figured it was a decent start. He looked back to Holiday, a bit confused by the sudden lack of cynicism. The taller admin only shrugged.

"Well, I got nothin', then." Doc admitted.

Holiday just flicked at the end of his white parade gloves as though he were picking at a nail. "Don't worry. I got this all figured out."

"Well then why the hell did you ask me?"

"I just wanted to hear some stupid ideas before we went with mine." Holiday said, with a shrug and a sneer. "It helps me feel less self-absorbed."

"So what is it?" Doc asked, hoping that it would involve some manner of direct competition between himself and Ash. He'd been spending lots of extra time on the road training, lately, since Holiday was a man who frequently liked to take breaks, (even more so now that he was out of a bike again) and the muscular admin believed that their skills would match up much better, this time. Doc was disappointed, if only just a little, when Holiday kicked over the backpack that had sat conspicuously open between them for the majority of the boat-ride and several hundred small, wrapped candies fell out onto the floor.

"It's the very last of what we got," Holiday said with a smirk. "But I think it'll be worth it to see what happens when a Magikarp catching contest becomes a Gyarados catching contest."

The two admin spent many minutes giggling to themselves as they began unwrapping Rare Candies and tossing them into the eddies running toward the shoreline.

* * *

"Your boyfriend seems a little glum," Violet noted offhandedly, pointing with her thumb off to the south where Ash stood, peering out into the surf and absently stringing up his line.

Misty didn't bother to consider that. "I know that this has been said so many times that it no longer bears repeating, to either of you, but HE'S NOT MY FREAKING BOYFRIEND!"

"Why not?" Lily teased, bringing a manicured nail to her lower lip. "He is kinda cute."

When Misty got the impression that both of her sisters were now turned and watching Ash as he stood before the waves, her face blanched.

"First off," Misty began angrily. "That's gross." She pointed at Lily. "He's not even fifteen, which makes him like, six years younger than you!" She rounded on Violet. "And I don't know, at least like t-"

"You'll stop right there if you know what's good for you," the blunette, who like the other sensational sisters kept her age a closely guarded secret, snarled. Hell, as far as Misty knew, Daisy had been having her twenty-second birthday for the last six years running.

"Second of all," she continued, genuinely unimpressed by Violet's grave expression, "He's is not cute." She held out an open palm to indicate the subject in question. "He's a grubby faced little kid with frizzy hair. He's wearing the same clothes he left his house in, and that's only because his mom made him a new set, otherwise, he'd probably still be wearing the clothes I met him in! He smells like a six hour bike-ride in the rain, and look at him- he's picking the bruschetta out of his teeth with his fingers, because he thinks there's nobody watching him, _with his gloves on_, for Arceus' sake! There's nothing remotely cute about him," she crossed her arms, resolutely.

Rather than jeer, Lily simply did her best impression of Gertrude, mother to Hamlet, over-dramatically pressing her fingertips to her chest, and casting a gesture her way. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Misty only flattened her eyebrows, before groaning. "What do you two _want? _What's this favor about?"

"Well, you know how we were going to have Daisy play the Queen of the Sea-Dragons?"

"And how she like, totally stinks at playing the villain?"

Misty nodded. She'd never really bothered to follow the plots of the their performances, even though it was obvious that Daisy was a competent enough writer, but even she'd watched the rehearsal. It seemed like Daisy didn't have a vicious or sadistic bone in her body and so she had always looked uncomfortable playing an evil character in their performances. Most usually, she would play the hero, often times a princess (or prince as the script had called for a few times) and Violet would cover any mean or nasty roles that needed filled. Misty found that much more appropriate, as she wasn't sure if there was a bone in Violet's body that _wasn't_ vicious or sadistic.

"Well, someone still needs to run the lighting and sound board." Violet explained. "I can't do it this time."

Misty nodded. "I see."

Lily clapped her hands together. "So, we thought, hmm... rampaging, evil tyrant-queen, who does that remind us of?"

"You were naturally the first person we cast for the role."

"No," Misty said simply, without hesitation and tried to muscle her way past.

"Wait!" both of her older sisters cried in unison, catching handfuls of her belt from behind and hauling her through the sand, back to her original position.

"C'mon, Misty! It's not a hard role! You've got like, two spoken lines!"

"It'll totally be fun! Besides, we _need _you!"

"_No_." Misty repeated.

"Please! I spent all day yesterday setting up stage-pyrotechnics," Violet complained. "If you don't do it, they'll be nobody to set them off."

"Tough." Misty said with a stubborn glare. "If it was that important, you shouldn't have waited until the last possible second to find a replacement!" Not that she'd have agreed even if they'd brought the proposal to her last week, she admitted to herself, but still, her point remained sufficiently valid.

Lily cleared her throat. "Well, we hate to do this, but you're not leaving us any choice here." She held up a three by five photograph and held it out to her younger sibling.

"Do you remember when this was taken?" Violet asked.

She did. It had been taken in the fall, right after Rill had evolved. And just before she'd had her braces removed. She'd made a pointed effort never to smile with the terrible orthodontic device in her face, but the sight of Maril had just made her so happy that she'd forgotten, however momentarily, and smiled the biggest, most enthusiastic grin she'd managed since they'd been put in. Her sisters, cruel as they could often be, snapped a picture of her at the perfect moment. Or rather, the worst possible one. She looked like she had the drive link of a chain-saw hot-glued to her teeth. She even had her night-retainer in at the time!

Misty looked up at them in utter contempt and then down at the photograph. She crushed it and stuffed it into her pocket defensively but as she'd feared, they only shrugged.

"We've got more." Violet promised.

Lily held up her costume. "And unless you help us, a few of them just might find their way in Ash's backpack before he leaves."

Misty snatched the plastic hanger away from her sister, and though she said nothing, Lily and Violet both led her away with satisfied smirks, to a thick-walled, tented structure that they had set up down the beach a ways. She was surprised to find Daisy waiting for her inside.

Misty's expression changed little, in spite of the fact that Daisy's face was all smiles at the sight of her, evidently overjoyed that her and Violet could swap roles.

"Change into it, so I can adjust the fit, really quick." She said, pointing to the costume which was obviously cut for her, as opposed to Misty's less curvaceous form.

Misty stared blatantly at the garment, as her sister departed. She couldn't believe this crap!

Ash, having at this point realized that he had no tackle of which to speak, closed on the tent, grudgingly accepting the fact that he had to reunite with Misty if he wanted to do more than stand there looking like an idiot. He still had her lure, of course, but he was a little reserved about using it again, given that he had nearly lost it the last time. Besides, he needed a sinker to cast it far enough to work properly, anyways.

The three sensational sisters stopped him before he could enter the tent, though, with a giggling explanation, and gentle pushes that sent him trudging back on his heels. Misty almost made their warnings pointless when she threw open the flap of the tent, and hollered.

"I can't wear this!" She cried angrily, before her eyes bulged at the sight of Ash, and she gathered the flap about her body like a towel. "Daisy! Get _in_ here," she hissed.

Her oldest sister, with a laugh, let herself in and stared Misty up and down, while she ranted and carried on under her breath.

"Why can't you?" Daisy asked with a knowing chuckle.

"Because there's nothing to it!" Misty explained with a snarl. "You can't wear _nothing_, Daisy!"

The garment itself was a fairly skimpy string bikini, with pale blue piping, so as to appear much like the hardened fins of a Gyarados, which Daisy saw nothing wrong with. She could see however, that Misty was uncomfortable with it, even actively shielding it from direct view with her hands.

"What's the matter? Is it your Bikini line?" Daisy asked, standing on her tip-toes to have a look over the blocking forearm.

Misty practically blew a gasket. Could Daisy have said that any louder? With her face now boiling hot, she chucked her jacket at Daisy. "NO!"

Catching the sailing jacket before it collided with her face, Daisy only laughed harder.

"I can't walk around in this!" Misty howled in protest, removing her hands for the first time to indicate the swimsuit. Misty was too fair-skinned to have any telling tan-lines that might suggest the bikini was much smaller than what she'd have normally wore, but Daisy could tell by her awkward, hunched stance that she was baring far more skin than she was comfortable with.

Daisy shrugged, and tossed back her jacket. "So don't. We only need you for the very last scene. Just strip down then."

Misty shot her an ugly look, but then, realizing it was the best she was going to get, began to slip her clothes back on over the swimsuit.

When she was done, Daisy explained what her cue was to be, and gave her a brief rundown of her lines, though she made sure to impress that the actual words were not so important, as much as the delivery. "You're the villain, out to murder Princess Milotic's long-lost love!"

"That's me!" Lily piped from outside the tent, further solidifying her notion that Ash had heard every embarrassing word.

"Just remember to be scary!" Daisy reminded her, before giving her a neat shove back outside.

Mist scowled as she walked past the two middle sisters outside, finding that Ash had evidently departed long since, his tracks in the sand leading back the way he'd came. She would certainly have her motivation. She was already thinking of the many different ways she'd like to kill Lily. And Violet. And Daisy, for that matter. Ash had narrowly avoided her list so far, but that hardly prevented her from contemplating the matter darkly for the next few minutes.

She found Ash wandering the shoreline not too long after that, and she watched him from a distance. He'd wandered near to where the spiny red-haired champion was standing, looking cool as the day was long, in his maroon board-shorts and black a-shirt. As it was, Ash hadn't noticed him yet, and Lance was grinning out into the sea through mirrored wrap-arounds, as he struggled to land the bite he'd hooked on the twelve foot long deep-sea rod at his side. He was mostly working against the weight of his own line and rigging, which were way overkill for the job they were doing, she knew, but that didn't stop him from being the most awesome thing on the beach for a mile in either direction.

She wanted to call out to Ash, and divert him away from the VIP guest, who seemed to be rather enjoying himself -good news for her and her gym, but to do so might've drawn the champ's attention as well, and inadvertently enabled what she was now hoping to avoid. If Ash got anywhere near Lance, he would probably stick to him like glue, pester him with endless questions, stories, requests, and just generally cramp the Kanto League Champion's overabundance of style.

Still, it seemed, the moment to act had come and gone. Ash drew within a ten foot swath of the Dragon trainer, realized he was approaching someone, glanced up, and then... Nothing. There was no fire of recognition, no sudden grin. Ash just stepped to the side, giving the man who, to him, was just another attendee a decent berth, and continued on. Something about that face, that blank look of disinterest, dug at her. She nearly flinched at the thought of what had just happened. Had Ash honestly not recognized him? Sure, they had met before, but even still, Lance was one of the most powerful and skilled battlers in whole world, uncontested in the region. Even with the sunglasses on, Ash should have recognized him on those credentials alone.

She was surprised to find herself angry when she caught up to him, and just barely stopped herself from spinning him in place and demanding to know what in the hell was wrong with him.

"Hey," he offered when he noticed her at his six, still holding the end of an untackled line.

She still wasn't sure what to say when he finally turned to face her, so she blurted out uncomfortably. "Are you feeling alright?"

Ash stood pensive, and then curiously, looked down to Pikachu, beside himself. The two shared a definitive, if slow-coming smile, and then Ash turned back. "I'm okay. Just a little bummed out, I guess."

She nodded. She guessed she could understand that. Though she seriously doubted that Brock, Dawn or Max had intended it that way, to Ash, this had to seem like the returned backhand for his shaky departure with them in Sinnoh. She knew Brock well enough to believe that he couldn't possibly be vengeful, or go along with such a plot, well enough, but the whole scenario had seemed a little bit botched from the beginning. Nobody had said a word to Ash about the whole thing, apparently.

He managed a lopsided smirk. "What about you? Heard you were getting into costume."

Misty scowled through her sudden embarrassment, but that seemed to be all the confirmation he needed. She had the clothes that her sisters had picked out for her yesterday back on over it, but she was still irritatingly aware of the swimsuit. "S-something like that."

Ash was quiet for a while, and then nodded. "Well, I'm just gonna head over this way," he explained, pointing down the west end of the cape. As he turned to leave she heard him mutter to himself about staying "out of everyone's way..." The whole world was getting along just fine without him, he reasoned, and it would've continued to, he supposed, had Misty not immediately spun him by his arm.

This time she could not stop herself. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she yelled, so loud even that she was momentarily afraid that Lance, who was still not so far away, would notice. At the moment though, there were more bothersome implications. "You've been acting weird all day, and it's really starting to get on my nerves!" she explained, giving him a rough shake.

"First you're impossibly nice, and now you're all gloomy!" They both knew perfectly well that those were two things Ash Ketchum was not, and for her, it was beginning to be too much to tolerate. "What gives, Ash?"

Ash blinked back in surprise at her outburst, before finally managing a timid "Sorry." It only proved to make her angrier though, because soon she had him stumbling through the sand after her, dragging him by the same arm.

She should have been spending her time out here, mingling with the crowd, making sure everyone was enjoying the show, making sure they knew that Cerulean Gym would be fully renovated within the next month, to the effect of many new attractions and spectacles, as well as the same old fierce battling, and stylish coordination they had come to expect. Making sure that people saw her face, knew that she cared about the Gym, and cared about the time they were taking out of their schedules to attend the event. PR had become a very important part of the Gym Leader's arsenal of late, with the field changing the way it was. The League wanted a trainer's gym-challenge to be more than just a walk-in-walk-out experience. According to the new Leader's Guidebook published by none other than the P.I.A.'s board of commissioners, a trainer was to "leave, not just with the impression that they have been challenged, but also, with a sense of wonderment and renewed appreciation for all things Pokemon." In Kanto, where the idea of a Gym had been long grounded in a simplistic and reserved set of traditions, the Leaders were still scrambling to catch up with the times. Before she had began to rebuild, about the most exciting aspect of Kantonese Pokemon Gyms had been the invisible maze in Fuscia City's gym, and that still put them considerably behind. Hell, overseas, in Isshu, every gymnasium was practically a self-contained amusement-park.

Still, the situation called for action and the reputation of her gym would not be lost, if one or two people did not get the chance to see her. Besides, she reminded herself venomously, once she got back and played her role in Daisy's stupid performance, everyone would be seeing a lot more of her than they'd bargained for.

"Come with me. Right now," she commanded, steeling her grip.

She kept dragging and pulling and tugging until Ash finally flailed out of her grasp. Only then did she realize that he'd been yelling at her, and that she'd actually been dragging him across the beach on his rear for almost twenty yards. Briskly, he stood, dusting himself off.

"-and now there's sand in my jeans. Awesome." Ash said, concluding his complaint with an awkward shake of his hips and flap of his right pant-leg at his inner thigh, before throwing both hands in the air in defeat.

But Misty would not let it go at that. She crinkled up one side of her face, and snatched him by his jacket again. "Come on," she ordered precipitately.

"Where are we goin'?"

"Just walk."

"I _would_, if you'd let me," he managed, finally prying her fingers out of his clothing, and falling awkwardly into step beside her. His shoes weren't made for trudging sand and he kicked it about as he went, but he mostly kept pace beside her, in spite of having to step over or around Pikachu a few times.

Still angry at her own predicament, and a little embarrassed at her own impetuousness Misty refused to answer anymore questions regarding their destination. She didn't speak to him again for some minutes, until he remembered why exactly he'd been out looking for her in the first place. He explained that he was in need of tackle.

Misty shrugged. "Don't you still have that lure I sent you?" At his sudden silence, she looked very irritated. "Don't tell me you lost my special lure, Ash Ketchum!"

"No," he assured her, withdrawing the tiny facsimile from his pocket to show her. "But it got snagged off the line last time I tried to use it."

Misty sighed. "Probably because you're not tying it right."

Ash felt all of his features wither at once, his frown becoming an absolute grimace, his palms slapping against his thighs, and his knees knocking together as he stopped in his tracks. He really didn't want to be lectured on proper angling methods right now. Ash was bound and determined to be as nice to her now as he had been all day, more for the fact that he was in no state to handle a full scale argument, than for continuing his plan to annoy her. He took a deep breath, and then tried again, just barely keeping himself from yelling at her back, as she continued on without him.

"Do you have any, or not?"

She ground to a halt, and spun to look back on him. Her expression was sour at first, but then it softened considerably in the face of his rather pathetic countenance. She looked down into her handbag (her sisters had pitched a royal fit when she'd entertained the notion of wearing her usual backpack) and sifted around a bit. Amongst other things, not the least of which was the recumbent Maril, was the small plastic divider-tote she used as a travel-sized tackle box. "Yes. Now are you coming?"

Ash huffed. "Coming _where_?"

To his surprise, Misty smiled. Actually smiled. "You'll see."

* * *

Mark felt a little uncomfortable as he looked down on his sweet-as-candy, so-tan-it-was-practically-off-white cup of decaff. It wasn't really any different from how he normally had it, but he supposed that if he'd have known how she was going to have hers, he'd have avoided doubling up on the non-dairy creamer and low-calorie sweetener.

Hers was so black it was like you were staring into a hole in the bottom of her cup that went all the way to the center of the earth. Next to that, his practically resembled chocolate milk, easy on the chocolate, heavy on the milk. He was dead certain that he had a milk-mustache going too, in spite of the fact that he'd not-so casually palmed his mouth several times now. He knew he should've shaved.

She'd kind of surprised him, though. He hadn't really expected her to get in touch with him again. Ever, really. But, as luck would have it, he'd bumped into her at the laundromat less than a month later. Frayed blue hair bobbing in time to a slow song blasting through her headphones as she thumbed through the last few pages of some gun magazine, sitting there in what was so obviously her last clean pair of shorts and tank-top, that it was painful. And even though fate had dealt him such an awesome hand, he still wasn't sure if he'd have had the guts to come and say hello, if she hadn't noticed him first.

In truth, she'd been shadowing him for almost a week prior, just to satisfy her overactive police instincts and make sure he didn't do anything suspicious. She doubted he'd ever find that out, though. She took a drink off scalding hot espresso, and motioned towards his cup, mirroring the exact words she'd said to him yesterday, leaning low over the last row of washing machines, all the while sneering at his expression as he tried nervously to keep his eyes north of the sagging cut of her tank-top.

"So, I thought you said you wanted to have coffee with me some time?"

Mark rolled his eyes. "We are."

Penny made a face. "Yeah, I guess there might be some coffee in there somewhere." She watched Mark make his own face in kind, but turned it back into a smile. One that said all too loudly, _I'm just happy to be here._

Penny looked nice in civilian clothes he thought, if you could really call them that. Looking back on it, he didn't exactly remember that she had been wearing a police uniform at all. Probably something more like motorcycle leathers seemed right. Now, she had on a denim jacket, that suggested through bulky fit alone that it concealed the same unspoken armament as it's leather counterpart. Boots and jeans covered her casually crossed legs, and he thought he could make out "VCFD Volunteer" on the gray t-shirt she wore. She was so casually dressed that it made him feel stuffy and overdressed in an unbuttoned polo and slacks, but she seemed very ready to fly into hot pursuit, leap into a gunfight, or some other action equally as heroic and crazy as the one she'd performed two weeks ago.

He rubbed the back of his head, and leaned town towards the table. In a hushed tone, he began the words he'd thought of to say too late.

"I just wanted to thank you," he glanced aside as though making sure nobody was listening, though there were few people in the cafe at this time of day, and he intended to keep his appreciation on the ambiguous side, "for what you did."

He held up his hand when she shrugged nonchalantly, to imply that he wasn't finished. "I don't want to come off as ungrateful, or too sappy, or anything like that..."

He struggled to find the words to say what he meant. "But it's more than just about, you know, the money or the store." He continued. "You saved my life. I thought that I would never see my son again and the only reason I'm still alive is because of you. If you hadn't come along, those guys would've burned that place to cinders with Jason and I in it." He finished. "Both of us owe you and that Arcanine of yours, big time."

Mark felt uncomfortable, really. He didn't know exactly how forward it might sound, but he figured it was just the same, either way. He didn't want to shoot himself down in flames on what was quite possibly his first date since he and his wife, Arceus rest her soul, had come out of their sweetheart days almost ten years ago- and boy, did that thought make him feel old- but he needed to get it of his chest.

Penny leaned forward, and rested her chin on the ball of her palm, regarding him for a moment. A moment that dragged on and on, in his mind. _Well, at least if she gets up and leaves_, he thought,_ I can sit here and enjoy this coffee without her laughing at me._

"I guess if I'm ever in a rough spot, you can give me a hand." Penny said, smartly, without putting too much weight on her words. They both knew that she would never be in any spot so rough that she would need his help. But still, that didn't stop her from making the gesture, which she could see that Mark appreciated.

Besides, if she ended the matter conclusively, she was pretty sure he wouldn't bring it up again. She'd decided to go out with him today because she thought he was sort of sweet and cute, in a repressed sort of way. Not because she wanted someone to tell her how great she was for doing her job, or pile similar excessive praises on her, however deserved he might've thought them. At least he hadn't started crying or anything super-awkward like that. She could appreciate that it was a big deal to him, but honestly, she was more than willing to put the incident behind them, if he was.

"Wow, have you been watching this at all?" he said abruptly, stealing her moment of contemplation, and inadvertently putting her uncertainties to rest.

Penny turned at his indication, to the television in the corner, and the news broadcast, there upon. Mark yelled for the barista to turn it up, but she was pretty sure she already knew what it was about.

"They've been saying on the news how they expected the renegade Team Plasma group, the ones from Isshu, those terrorist guys, the real extreme faction, what're they called? The Pokemon Liberty..."

"The PLF."

"Yeah, well, they've been saying on the news how they've been expecting them to come forward and take credit for the bombing attempt for a while now. Let out some video or something."

"I guess they finally did," Penny agreed, as the volume increased enough to be audible.

Ten thousand miles away, there was another feed of this broadcast, coming through live, though heavily encrypted. It was so heavily encrypted, in fact, that Kazuo doubted he could trace it's point of origin, even with the considerable amount of technology at his disposal. Of course, this only furthered his contempt for it, but none the less, he gave it due diligence, quietly running bit-mining sub-routines and hoping desperately that he would glean something, anything of use, as he watched one of his most hated adversaries make his proclamation.

"We have returned."

It was a false proclamation, Kazuo knew. Or rather, a proclamation based on false pretense. After all, he could hardly know, or claim to know why the foreign media seemed to think he was involved in an incident on their shores. Still, if it was a profitable circumstance for the PLF, their leader was sure to take advantage of it.

Ghetsis always took advantage of profitable circumstances. If it took a bit of slander, and double-talk to direct the flow of events a bit, he was more than capable of that as well. Ghetsis practically invented modern rhetoric. A long, long time ago, he'd been the leader of the strongest Pokemon syndicate in the world, feared both far and wide for it's influence and prestige, after all and such a lofty position did not easily come to men who did not possess the iron fist, stone heart and silver tongue.

"It is by Lord N's decree that we reach out to the world's Pokemon and the people who would enslave them. By the edict given through that divine conduit, we seek to end the tyranny and oppression of the Pokemon League and it's puppet governments throughout the world. Lord N, who convened with and befriended the holy white dragon Reshiram!"

Kazuo felt his hand twitch involuntarily when N was mentioned. Like Ghetsis, and the men who'd followed him, Kazuo had once considered himself a true believer. Not in the quasi-religious edicts the PLF followed, but in the ideal; the unshakable notion that people and Pokemon were not truly equals, nor would they be, without drastic and permanent change.

However, Unlike Ghetsis, he'd actually been there, in person the day that N had died. He'd been there, the day the Team had torn itself apart. And his faith, had it ever truly been there, was gone.

He remembered that it had been a superb day in august. One with hot, hot sun, and air as dry as you could ask for. Not a rainy or gloomy day, as he'd have expected to find in such forlorn recollection. Though, he supposed not even Arceus could have foreseen the events unfolding as they did. The team had recently ousted one of the strongest champions of all time, Alder. With that effort alone effectively decapitating the strongest force in the region aside from themselves Team Plasma was thus poised for their greatest coup yet. They had the police almost completely infiltrated by that point and were keeping the league baffled by their enigmatic comings and goings. They shouldn't have had anything to fear.

That day was intended to be the day that N brought Unova's foundations, the whole world's corrupt institution, crumbling to the ground. N would use Reshiram's might to face off against the new up-and-comer for the title, loud and outspoken against Team Plasma, and win, thus securing his new position as Lord and King of Team Plasma and as defacto controller of the region. Theirs would finally be the place to say, with a resounding voice "Trainers of the world, lay down your belts."

None of that ever had a chance to happen, because of Ghetsis.

Hilda, The challenger who rose to face N, had also earned the power of one of Isshu's legendary dragons. She, along with her force of powerful allies had fought their entire enclave to a surprising standstill, while she engaged Lord N in singular combat. She matched him and eventually, wore him into a stalemate with the unbelievable appearance of the black dragon Zekrom. The battle raged on and on, for hours, without either side gaining ground, and without giving up any either.

Paranoia-stricken, with so much he believed he stood to loose, that was when Ghetsis had struck. Or rather, ordered them to. The Shadow Triad, his highly secretive task force carried out his will. In the video, he could see two of them, even now, just barely perceptible in the grainy, high-artifact compression. Mere jagged upsets in the background. Perfectly identical, and completely ambiguous. The perfect assassins, or so they had proved.

Because of his police contacts, he had actually seen the autopsy reports. One blade had slipped between her ribs over her right kidney, and another had come from a nearly identical location to her left. A third had been jammed right between her shoulder blades. All three stab-wounds had made it to her heart, severing the spine and skewering both lungs on the way. The three intersecting blades killed her before she even knew they were there.

To this day, there was still no physical evidence. They were _perfect_ assassins.

In the midst of battle, only N had seen Hilda's attackers coming, Only brave, honorable N had rushed to help her with screams of protest, but it was that very act that had killed him. He crossed the field of battle just as both dragons had reached the pinnacle of their Fusion Bolt, and Fusion Flare attacks. Synergizing with one another, there was really very little that could survive their combined force. The PLF liked to think of their Lord N as a risen martyr, that he was borne away into the sky by the dragons; as much as the new faction chose to cling to the idea that no body had ever been found, he had seen the forensics report as well.

The International Police _had_ found a body. Just not a _whole _body.

"As always, we seek to enlighten those who facilitate and would perpetuate the existence of this institionalized poaching, imprisonment and slavery which your backwards and hedonistic society excuses as _companionship_. I'm sure most of you believe that we humans and Pokemon are partners that have come to live together because we want and need each other. However, that is not really the truth. Pokemon are different from humans. They are living beings that contain unknown potential that far, far surpasses our own. They are beings from whom we humans have much to learn. Tell me, what do any of these wonderful beings called Pokemon owe us?"

From there, for Ghetsis at least, it was only the small matter of putting a spin job on what had occurred. There had always been a division amongst the Team, as there were within most fundamental groups. There were the more liberal men who believed in the tenants of what N had stood for, or at least the idyllic goal in mind, and so supported the team, even if they didn't always agree with the methods or most of the doctrine. And then there was the far right, the conservatives who followed Ghetsis entirely. The Sages and their direct followers were among these.

After N's untimely death Team Plasma fractured overnight and left Ghetsis with only a fragment of his former power. Most abandoned the team's ideals all together, left the region, hoping never to be seen or heard from again. Kazuo was sure that some of them, much to their chagrin, _were _heard from again. He'd heard whisperings of International Police investigations involving mysterious stabbings matching the Shadow Triad's MO in places as far away as Almia.

So far, none had come for him yet. Likely because they knew better. Kazuo had gone far since he'd parted ways with Ghetsis. Founded his own team, a powerful and undeniably wealthy one. But still, in his own way, the green-haired King of Team Plasma, now the head of the militarized Pokemon Liberation Front, his green BDUs a far cry from the ceremonial vestments of old, had seemingly made out just fine. The event, though it had cost him a large portion of his empire, (not to mention his son, which Kazuo had his doubts that the man even cared about) had not been ultimately damning to his continued agenda.

It was easy for Ghetsis to claim that the act had been perpetrated by league aligned Interpol infiltrators within the team itself. Simple enough for him to claim that though their original target had been N, Hilda had been seen as a necessary expenditure -a procedure that was all to common for the International Police, according to him. Fragmented, and so heavily pupeteered by the team, the police couldn't convincingly fight the allegations any more than they would ever find evidence on any one of the secretive Shadow Triad. The League, likewise weakened, couldn't adequately defend itself either. They had struck back, of course, but not until the Team had already gone their separate ways.

The truth had never came to light, but later the whole event would be drummed up to look like a bombing, with evidence planted by the International Police and corroborated by the Ex-Champion, Alder. At that point, though, the effort hardly seemed to do anything but stir up ugly media attention, that was ultimately damaging to the league, the agency itself, and to the entire region as a result.

Ghetsis never faced legal action, because of course, like any good syndicate boss, he always kept his hands clean and so nothing could be linked back to him. The Triad, as always, was untouchable, if only because they had no real identities of which to speak. Any sum of DNA evidence (though there never seemed to be any) would not return results on any person living or dead. So as it was, Ghetsis merely retreated to some unmonitored corner of the region, and consolidated his power amongst his most powerful and loyal allies.

Kazuo, coming from nothing, had been forced to build from the ground up, and had done so well. He was eager to find out where that put him, and how he truly measured up against the former Plasma King. He knew that it would not likely amount to much of a competition.

Team Nebula, like the astral phenomenon it was named, spanned a vast and wide distance. Syndicated holdings had major enterprises on every continent, in numerous regions throughout the world. Ghetsis could've held every man woman in child in Isshu under his thrall and it would not amount to the logistical sway his syndicate held. If the International Police's botched terrorist maskarovka had succeeded in only one aspect, it had certainly served to keep the PLF's comings and goings closely monitored and contained. He was so well informed and connected that he could probably cripple whole economies if whispered in the right ears. What did Ghetsis have? Sword-waving fanatics? Guns?

He crossed his arms. What did Ghetsis have? Why was this even worth his time? Radical though they were, Kazuo couldn't imagine that there was anyone stupid enough in the PLF to have sent this to him in the hopes that it would scare him. They were even more ignorant if they were trying purposefully to draw his attention. There was no way an organization like the PLF would benefit from making more personal enemies. Especially with someone who knew them so well.

So why was this here? Why was this feed being sent to him directly?

He glanced down at his windowed bit-tracking programs, devoting the whole of his energy to them, for the time being. He wanted to come away with something. At least something that he could follow up on later, even if it returned nothing definitive during the duration of the feed. His reinvested vigor didn't last long. The conclusion of the PLF declaration stole his attention completely.

"Know this: a day will soon come where we will reveal the truth that others, the non-believers would try to hide from the world. The truth that has long laid buried beneath the earth. That day will bring with it the true history and origin of Pokemon and with it, their emancipation."

His fingers slipped across the glass interface, leaving his hands sprawled rigidly over it's surface, as he froze in place. Wild thought rampaged through his mind, but the last expression Ghetsis displayed before the broadcast cut to black seemed to confirm every fear, and teasingly lead every suspicion down the winding roads of a million unanswered questions.

Furiously, his eyes locked on the single, blinking red light at the head of his desk, soldered to a low-band copper wire that led through a clapping valved drilled into the floor of his office. Down, down, down it ran, through the walls and lower access tunnels to the cordoned-off research lab.

Someone on the other end wanted to speak to him.

* * *

They stood on a low-lying, grassy bluff, hidden in the shadow of the cliff-side lighthouse. This was her spot. This was where she always came to fish or to train, when she wanted to be alone, or just needed to focus. She didn't explain, though. She simply offered, "I come here a lot." He didn't seem to require any more information.

She smiled when she looked at him, and the huge grin he had on his face. With his hair down and his head uncovered, he was rather appealing, she thought. A bit like one of the long haired model-types her sisters were always panting about, though with his androgyny lent to him by his young age, rather than fashion creed. Her sisters were right, though. There was no denying it; Ash was definitely a pretty-boy. In another life, he might've been a real heart-breaker, someday. In this one, however, he safely fell into the categories awkward and dorky. He'd never properly washed his face in all the time she'd known him, and what he lacked in social grace was not compensated with bad-boy mystique, as it might've been in some fantasy of her teenage heart. Just stupid smirks, dirty elbows, and a wild, innocent empathy that threatened to escape his skinny frame. At least, that was what had always been there, until recently.

Well, that said, Ash was not some hollow man, or shell of his former self. Not yet, at least. There was too much of him that was fight and spunk for that to happen. The look on his face said otherwise, but the Ash underneath, the one that everyone seemed to be getting more and more occasional glimpses of, when he was at his most disarmed or most tenuous; tired expressions she'd come to know, perhaps more personally than she liked, told a story that she was already aware of.

Ash knew he'd made a poor decision and that it was too late to undo the damage done. His friends were headed for Johto without him and he was alone now, truly alone, whether he liked it or not. Though he might've protested it in the face of their query, she knew that Ash hated to be by himself. She could see very clearly that he was sorry for ever having parted ways with them, but now could say nothing, lest he renege on all his words and bluster. In truth, as much as she'd protested against him and his stupid idea to train by himself from the beginning, and as much as she knew it was his own fault, she couldn't help but pity him now.

She wanted to do something to make it easier on him and that was why she had brought him here, she guessed. She thought also, fleetingly, that she might put a hand consolingly on his shoulder or perhaps even hug him, like Dawn had, to ease his sore feelings, to let him know that she, at least, was here for him. Frustratingly, she assured herself that it was her crush on him talking, and so decided that was something for someone else to do. Not her. Too awkward. Too uncomfortable.

"It's nice," he said. She could tell, though his expression was still dulled somewhat, that he meant it.

He stopped to arrest the movement of a stray clump of his messy hair in the sea-breeze, while she thought of how she might respond. After a moment, she elected to say nothing. Instead, she steadied the hem of her skirt, and sank into the grass at the cliff's edge, folding her legs beside herself, before patting the ground next to her. Fishing was good for the soul, she reminded herself. Gave a person time to think. She wasn't sure that was what Ash needed, and further, she wasn't exactly sure Ash was capable of the sort of introspect the act implied, but it was good medicine all the same. With Maril and Pikachu having resumed their game in the sand-dunes as though it had never been interrupted in Viridian Forest, she and Ash could sit up here for a while, until her sisters' show started, maybe get a bite or two, and enjoy the quiet of the cape together.

She muscled down a sigh at the romantic connotations and turned sharply aside to conceal a sudden blush, fuming angrily at herself again. _When was this going to stop, today? _Luckily for her, Ash wasn't paying her much attention. When she looked back, he stood bumping his fishing rod against his shoulder lightly, seeming as though he were deciding on something.

"You know," Ash began with a far-away look, "you and I are a lot alike." His mind was on the unvisited inlet shore of his own hometown. On his own private sanctuary in his younger years, and how this place must've served a similar function for his friend. To be honest, he liked this spot she had chosen, better than his own. Aside from the negative stigma his held by his own recollection, the Cerulean cape was a much more picturesque shoreline, and this grassy sea-cliff was truly beautiful.

As he sat down beside her,she regarded him with a questioning expression. "In what way?" she managed at last, with the slightest note of incredulity.

Ash blinked at her rather rapidly, evidently not having expecting to be called upon to provide explanation. Hastily raveling his line from the reel, and looping through the guide rings, he tried of think of a reason. Well, at least, a reason he wanted to share. Telling her about how he'd hid from Gary and sat alone on the shores of his hometown, wiping his snotty nose and imagining that he was a Pokemon Master, hardly seemed like a good idea. He was almost sure it would invite ridicule.

"Well, I mean," he muttered, "just certain stuff, you know."

She didn't, but she shrugged it off. Instead, she looked out ahead and into the endless, shining sea caught in the sunlight as it was. Like a rough-shod field of sparkling glass running all the way to the horizon, she thought. She loved the look of the Kanto sea off the cape of her home. It had birthed her love of the water, leading to her great love for Water Pokemon. There, she supposed, was a way in which they were a lot alike.

She nodded in silent affirmation, as she assembled her own fishing rod. After all, that was what she'd first noticed about Ash, after considering him in earnest. He loved Pokemon, and so did she. As she set about tying her lure to the line, she wondered just what exactly had fostered her friends deep adoration for Pokemon, so profoundly. There weren't a lot of people who showed the same enthusiasm that Ash did. Trainers everywhere loved a few Pokemon Almost everyone was good friends, companions, or at least cared about one Pokemon in their lives. But Ash, he cared about all of them. There had to be a reason for that, right? But what was it? His mom wasn't a Pokemon trainer, though she was certainly a caring woman, Misty knew. Maybe it had to do with living in the same town as Professor Oak? What was it? Her curiosity getting the better of her, she nudged him gently, once he'd gotten a bobber strung onto his line.

"What made you want to be a Pokemon trainer, Ash?" she asked, almost surprised at how stupid the question sounded aloud. All the time she had traveled with him, and she'd never really asked. She tried not to let on, pretending to be focused instead on twisting the winding, looping clinch knot around the eyelet of her reclaimed lure. Ash had been carrying it for almost a year now, and she intended to catch a big one with it, just to show him how it was done.

Ash ran a hand back to the cap of his skull, blew out a long breath at her question, and didn't say anything at first. His hesitance made her think that perhaps, for the first time ever, she'd strayed into unwelcome territory where Ash was concerned. Involuntarily, her eyes widened. Maybe the reason she'd never heard this story, was because he didn't want to talk about it. As a hasty addendum, she added: "If it's alright to ask." Ash seemed unphased though. He rolled his head around a little bit, squinting one eye in forced recollection before he began the story.

Ash started with a long grunt of effort, as though dredging up the tale was a physical effort. "I don't know if it was one thing exactly," The young trainer said patiently, working a slip sinker onto his line, casually. "But, probably my dad, mostly." Misty arched her brows quickly to show that she was interested in the story, but Ash said nothing and so she chose not to press. Instead they sat listening to the sound of the gently rolling tide below. This was what she'd wanted, she reminded herself, as her curiosity threatened to boil over; a quiet, relaxing retreat. She busied herself casting her line, and was surprised when Ash spoke again, unprovoked.

"I wanted to be out here, traveling. Like he was, you know?" Ash tilted his head to either side, as though he himself were unsure of what exactly that meant. In truth, Ash supposed that it was partly desire to follow the man, and partly desire to follow the example. He'd been traveling for for almost five years and he hadn't yet crossed paths with his father. Strangely, this wasn't to his disappointment; he assumed that it would happen eventually, if only as a matter of inevitability. He'd met so many trainers in his journey that one day, he was certain that they too would meet.

Ash cast his line out into the water, once he'd assembled and baited it. While jockeying the bobber into the most desirable spot, intending to let it sit he thought he felt a bite. It proved to be nothing; just the gentle bob of the waves, but it was enough to break his train of thought.

Misty regarded him with a strange look, when he turned back. It made sense, she guessed. Ash had wanted initially to follow in his father's footsteps, and she supposed that was innocent enough a motivation to fit Ash like a glove. The answer she was after was deeper than that, though. She didn't want to know what had made him a trainer, per se, even though that was what she'd asked. She was more interested in what made him the sort of trainer he was.

"But why do you love Pokemon so much?" She asked bluntly.

He laughed easily and without hesitation. "Doesn't everybody?" He looked out to the sea again, as though he were surveying the whole of it's Pokemon content with new eyes. "What's not to love?"

She couldn't help but smile at that. Some things about Ash, she supposed, just were. They required no explanation, and no bad day, no matter how lousy, would ever take those special things away from him. She felt the weird flutter in her chest and the heat return to her face, but she did not feel the need to force them away now. Instead she laughed. "You're right."

Ash seemed to like that response, and together they worked their lines in the surf with quiet smiles. No more needed to be said.

* * *

"I entreat thee, spirit!" Princess Milotic cried, lifting her pink-gloved forearm, and pressing the back of it to her brow, in self-sympathy. The long, ruffled tail of her single-piece swimsuit swished with the motion. "Be you but shade or Stygian specter here to taunt and torture, then begone, as all others have passed from my sight. But, if be you truly the spirit of Kyogre, then take pity upon your modest and miserable servant! Samurott, O' Samurott! Return him hence, I beg! I cannot bear the loneliness in this dark, empty sea!"

"Detest you this, than detest you thyself, Milotic!" Came a computer-enhanced voice belonging to Violet, from the sound-booth behind the stage-curtain, though Lily, her swimsuit draped in dark navy folds inter-weaved by red trim was the one moving her lips. Smoke pots behind the youngest sensational sister belched red fumes, and a distant rumbled added to the commanding voice. "You, who's beauty and voice ring like the distant cries of supple sirens, yet who's fastidious, wanton vanities ring truer still."

Daisy spun in place, as though physically struck, collapsing onto a plush chaise lounge, careful not to jostle the body-microphone she was wearing. Pressing her flattened palms to her eyes, and completing Princess Milotic's display of misery, she let go of a sad moan. "Your words are sharp, spirit."

"Have you no pride in a blade of your own manufacture, then? When, surely, it was _you_that honed it to such an edge?" Violet shot back, Lily filling in the necessary pantomime.

"Depart!" Princess Milotic cried out in tearful anger, as one who is tormented by the weight of their own actions. "There is not a soul left to hear my remorse and repentance, thus hollowed, is no more a sanctuary to me than this vacant castle! Depart from here, and lacerate my heart no more, foul phantom!"

"I do naught but let the wound of your own making!" the booming voice of Kyogre assured. Violet, sliding a dimmer down to it's lowest setting, tapered off the stormy weather sound-effects. "...But your tears are not lost in this endless ocean of mine, sweet sovereign." Lily drew close to her sister, and sat regally at the end of the lounge, pretending to gently wipe away tears from the distraught Princess Milotic's face.

"This shit is boring," Holiday said with a groan, splashing his hand in the water as he flopped over to the other side of the bow, some 30 feet away.

"It was your idea," Doc reminded him.

Holiday stuck out his tongue. "Not this shit. That shit." The taller Nebula pointed for clarification, toward the pontoon stage where the drama was taking place. "I thought I could handle high theater, if there were enough scantily clad women involved. I really did."

"Maybe you're just uncultured, Bro." Doc suggested evenly, giving the oars another gentle twist to stay their course. "Why don't we find out what the kid is up to?"

Holiday only rolled his eyes at the notion, when he saw Doc looking pointedly at his Xtranceiver. "Because they're probably making out somewhere." He made a dismissive gesture, as if to suggest that this was what all teenagers would do, given enough time alone.

Doc didn't argue the point, not intent to relive the last time they'd played the part of voyeur in the young pairs...whatever that had been.

* * *

"So I was thinking." Ash began with uncertainty, drawing his thin lips into a lopsided frown. He wasn't sure whether he felt good or bad about what he was going to say. "Now might be a good time for me to challenge you."

Misty let the tip of her rod droop, in consternation. For some reason, she hadn't planned for this. She'd somehow missed the queue. Of course Ash would want to battle. Of course he would come for what all trainers sought from her. A Cascade badge. It shouldn't have been a mystery, shouldn't have even been surprising, but somehow she'd never really imagined herself standing against Ash Ketchum. Not since she'd been his traveling companion, his sometimes rival, sometimes coach, had she entertained the notion. Their two fields, that of trainer and leader were separate, after all.

Though, perhaps that was foolish. After all, trainers and leaders were meant to clash at some point, she reminded herself.

It was just strange, though. She expected to be more excited. There was a time, she supposed, when she practically thrived on putting the young boy in his place. She hadn't loved to see him lose, nor had she been thrilled when his inexperience showed, of course. She only liked it when she beat him. She liked it when she was better than him, and he was forced to admit it. When he was forced down a peg, in light of her. It wasn't because she had ever needed validation, truthfully. It was a more personal thing than that, and perhaps a more maligned, in a way.

She knew that it was a little cruel, but back then, in a way, she had liked it when she could stamp out some of that exuberance, some of that stupid, boundless optimism and spirit he had.

It was not because she'd ever disliked that about him, either. But because she'd been a stupid, jealous kid and deep down, somewhere, she'd been afraid. Worried that if she didn't do something, anything to keep him restrained, then someone, somewhere out there, would begin to notice the same things she noticed. Begin to adore the same things she adored about him. She supposed, at the time, she hadn't really known where that would lead, suffice to say that it paradoxically jeopardized her feelings for him, either because _he_ would eventually realize just how amazing he was, or worse some other girl, like _Melody_, would, and cheat her out of his companionship by being a lot nicer than she'd been to him. She'd never have admitted it even then, but traveling with Ash had been the most important thing in her life at that time.

But what about now? It wasn't as though every time they'd ever interacted, she had sought to usurp his confidence, or undermine his efforts for her own benefit. She had been stupid and sometimes a little mean -though, in her defense, so had he, certainly- but she was not evil. There had definitely been times where they'd competed against one another with nothing on the line. Where they'd worked together for mutual gain. There had even been times here she'd honestly and truly tried to help him out of the simple goodness of her heart, even if it had been thrown back into her face by the brash young trainer most of the time. Couldn't she just stand across from him and battle for what was his to earn?

She could. She definitely could. But the question was, much to her surprise, _not_ whether or not she could stand to lose to him.

She was by no means an undefeated fighter. She'd taken losses big and small and in a way, that was part of her job. To revel in the victories of her opponents so that they could take away from it what it was worth. At this point in her life, yes, she could stand to lose to Ash Ketchum. He wasn't the same thickheaded dolt he had been, and she wasn't the same hot-head she had been, respectively.

The question was, she knew, just by having watched the way he slumped around all afternoon, was whether or not she could stand to _win_ against him.

She knew he had a lot of experience as a trainer, was more traveled than her and perhaps by this point, generally more versed. But her wealth of training experience did not end with her journey and was not small by any means, so there was still every possibility that she would win such a competition. She had beaten him before. More than once, even. Who was to say what the outcome would be? In good conscience, she could neither throw a match against him nor circumvent one. She would know and so would he, and neither would be able to accept that, because neither ever had. There's was a relationship built on rivalry, after all. But if she won, honestly, how badly would it sting him? How bad would that ache, with the hurt that was already there? Could she really stand to do that to her best friend? Kick him while he was trying to get back to his feet?

With a miserable expression, she thought there was a time where, yes, she probably could have. She would've justified it then by saying that the loss would've taught him an important lesson! That it would've gotten him to stop acting so full of himself! Now, having grown some, she hardly saw the need and hardly had the desire to teach such a lesson, even if it _was_needed. Any other time, she promised herself, any other day, and she would've leapt at the chance to face off against him.

Misty spun the molded plastic knob on the screw of her reel uselessly, wishing, like she supposed most people did, that she could go back in time and undo certain things, make it so that she would not have such a history of defeatism when it came to Ash. Alas, she did not, and she had only what was, what actually had been, to go upon.

She opened her mouth to answer, perhaps to ask if he was certain, but Ash was faster. "Woah!" He shouted, when there was a sharp tug on the line. Rearing back, he was surprised when the rod bowed low before him and a hard secondary tug pulled at his arms. He'd just gotten a huge bite! In excitement, he stood and fought back, forgetting himself.

* * *

"It's going great!" Lily whispered in congratulations, as she hastily disrobed, and Violet quickly, but efficiently began slopping blue body-paint onto her from her face to her knees; all the places where her new change of wardrobe would not be covering her.

Lily had to be back out on stage as Prince Samurott, before the smoke cleared, and Daisy was done with her monologue, so neither wasted time on modesty. They'd practiced this about fifty times. Once the two had covered just about every inch of her in paint, Lily slipped on the sea-shell swimsuit, and Violet helped her into the rigid boots and gauntlets.

After slipping on the segmented headdress which molded with a single horns to resemble a Samurott's shell, Lily gave the top of her sister's head a smack of support. "Break a leg."

If the effect of the change had been any more tangible on the closest onlookers, even Lily would have blushed, were she not so caught up in the performance. Doc, who had taken up a position at the side of the boat, much like his partner, collected his jaw when he was elbowed sharply from the side.

He expected Holiday, all business, to be glaring at him and pointing down into the water below them, reminding him to be watchful of the telltale glittering and flashing that signified Pokemon evolution. Instead, the taller admin hooked a thumb up toward the stage, where Princess Milotic, and Prince Samurott, wearing barely more than a few sea-shells attached by cord, and some blue paint, were embracing one another passionately. Holiday made a "V" with his fingers, and obscenely flicked his tongue between them. Both of them descended into snickering, which lasted until the boat lurched, preparing to roll under the poorly distributed weight, and they ripped back to their seats in sudden panic. Or at least, that's what they had believed to be the cause of the upset, to begin with.

When Holiday caught sight of the long dark shape rolling through the water, he shared a knowing smirk with Doc. "Things are about to get interesting."

* * *

Ash looked at his broken line, nonplussed, holding the stress-coiled tip between his fingertips. "Wow."

He glanced over towards Misty, who was laughing under her breath, and favored her with a somewhat less enthused expression. Trying to muffle the tail end of her chortle, Misty dug in her tackle-box for another bobber and handed it to him, to use in conjunction with her sinkers and hooks which were already laid out from his previous use. He took it with a roll of his eyes. "Must've been huge," he mused.

"Maybe," she said simply, giving him a shrug.

"Felt like a big one," Ash responded, sourly. He stuck the end of the line between his lips, to straiten it with saliva.

Well, Magikarp are wide, paddle-shaped fish. They may not be very strong, but when they turn themselves sideways against the line"- she displayed the back of her hand to him then, held flat, and pretended to be pulling it toward her chest with a great effort- "it's like trying to pull a skillet through the water. I've seen four pounders break fifteen pound test line. The one you hooked probably wasn't as big as you think."

"You sure know a lot about water Pokemon." Ash popped his eyebrows as though he were making a fresh observation, which only annoyed Misty, thinking it pointed sarcasm.

"Of course I do," she retorted, sharply. "It's my job, after all."

"Yeah," he offered after a long while, as if he were considering saying something else. "That makes sense, then." It wasn't Ash's natural tendency to argue that gave him pause. Truthfully, he was wondering what his career entailed, exactly. He supposed that if he was, in fact, required to absorb a great deal of observational knowledge as part of his tenure as a Pokemon trainer, as seemed to be Misty's responsibility, then his recent visit to Pokemon Tech had more than exemplified his failure in that regard.

Misty watched the gloom creep over him then, when it had seemed only just a moment ago that he'd tossed it away. Mistakenly, she assumed that it must've had to do with her. Her fingertips rose impulsively to the corner of her mouth, and she pulled at the corner of her lip apprehensively, her pinky nail tapping against a canine tooth that used to jut a bit further a year ago, but she was too flustered to notice. Was she doing it again? Letting her fingertips drift from her mouth to her temple, she realized that she was. Intentionally, she'd sought to undermine Ash's supposed accomplishments, just for the sake of being contrary. She was an experienced angler, but she hadn't touched his fishing pole, hadn't felt the tug of the line as he had. So who could say what Ash had hooked, honestly?

Misty wasn't the type to apologize. In fact, she couldn't remember a time in her life where she'd ever gone back on her decree, or rescinded an insult. It just wasn't in her nature, she supposed, having three older sisters who took no time to hear excuses from her, and gave none of their own. Being the littlest had a way of making you to impervious to certain things, and self-doubt was one of them. She wouldn't say she was sorry, and she wouldn't say she was wrong, because she knew that she probably wasn't either. But there came a time where you had to pretend, after all. That was probably the biggest thing about growing up, really; learning when it was best not to say what you wanted to. It was honestly the only thing that had improved her once tenuous relationship with her older sisters. Not that she didn't want to kill them most of the time, just that she pretended not to.

Ash was her best friend. If she could manage it for them, then surely she could manage it for him. A stubborn part of herself cried out in antipathy, though. The things she said had never bothered Ash so much before! So what if he was having a bad day? That didn't mean he had to be such a big baby about everything! _She_ had bad days, but that didn't mean she hung her head every time her sisters gave _her_ a hard time!

Though, if she was the hard and tough sibling of her family, then Ash was her exact opposite number. One thing about Ash that she'd always noticed, was that he certainly had the 'only child' syndrome. That meant a lot of things, not the least of which, was that he was a easily insulted- even if for some reason, he wasn't saying so out loud on this particular day. Nobody was quite so easy to slight as a kid who'd grown up having everything to himself, after all. But Ash's softness really didn't come from being spoiled, or from some overblown sense of entitlement.

A long time ago, she would've said differently, told you that it was exactly those things that made Ash such an easy target. But she'd watched Ash grow slowly but surely _out_ of those things, with her own eyes, after all. Ash was just... _sensitive,_ she guessed. Especially right now. He really was a nice guy, if you let him be, so to a certain extent, she supposed that had to go _both ways_. If he could so willingly put his heart into something, he would often have to expose it. Then again, it was for the exact same reason, that Ash was one of the toughest people she'd ever known.

She'd watched Ash get his feelings hurt lots of times. She'd never told anyone, or talked about it but, she'd seen him cry once or twice. He'd tried to hide his tears when Butterfree had flown away to be with his mate, or when he'd lost in the Indigo League that first year, when he'd set his hopes so high, but she'd seen them. If she'd been in his shoes, she wasn't certain that she could've so readily allowed herself to experience the same hurt again. She wasn't sure she could've so soon risen to the challenge in the Orange Islands as he had, when he'd defeated Drake, or so willingly have let so many of his Pokemon go on their way as he had, when it became obvious that they would be happier on their own. But Ash_ had_ done these things.

It was the recollection of these points, if nothing else, that solidified her belief that Ash would soon bounce back from this blue period, as well, though it seemed to be haunting his steps more than most. Ash always bounced back.

Still, this sitting around looking sad crap wasn't going to do at all. She still didn't want to do this, but honestly, she didn't see any other way.

With a helpless sigh, she put her thoughts to the side and pushed the rod from his hands down to the grass between them. When he looked up, confused, she was holding a poke ball out towards his face in reply.

Misty still had plenty of time before her sisters would need her, and she could think of only one thing that would lift Ash's spirits. Pressing the button on Politoed's poke ball, she expanded it for use before his amber eyes.

"Get up, Ash," she said with a smile that Ash reflected, and soon out-shined. "It's time for you to earn that badge."

Ash seemed to give off a glimmer then, like the old him was shining through. He stood, and thumbed up the hem of his jacket, clicking a poke ball of his own off the magnetic hanger on his belt. He laughed, in just the same exact way he would've four years previously, when they were still traveling together. "Wow. Are you sure? I mean, everything is so business-like today. Can you find the time in your busy schedule to actually _battle_?"

Misty, her own grin now threatening to escape the confines of her face, rose to the taunt. "Ash, I can _always _find time to mop the floor with you."

"Oh yeah?" The trainer remarked, scrambling back a few steps to make room between them for the upcoming battle he was suddenly more hungry for than any he'd had so far on his return journey. "Well how do you wanna lose to me, then? One on one?"

Misty smirked as she rose to her feet, and took a half-second to adjust her skirt. "C'mon, Ash. Lets be fair, here. If I'm gonna get _any _satisfaction at all out of making you look like a total novice, you're going to have to bring more than one Pokemon to the table. Otherwise, what's this gonna take? A minute? Minute and a half?"

"Yeah right!" Ash said defiantly. "You may be beating junior trainers left and right, but it's been years since the last time you faced off against me."

Misty waved away that notion. "I beat you then, and I can beat you now."

"You got lucky last time!"

"You'd just love to believe that, wouldn't you?" She shrugged. "Face it, Ash. You're still a rookie compared to me!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not, and I'll prove it!"

"Then prove it! Best of three matches, first to KO, or RO counts."

Ash was already throwing his poke ball out between them. "Tauros, I choose you!"

"Politoed, go!"

With the two so entranced in the battle, they would've been hard pressed to notice Ash's bobber return to the surface briefly, then zip off to the south, following a long shape in the tide.

"Lets open up with a Take Down," Ash called, beginning with an aggressive move, determined to keep control of the pacing.

Misty was the veteran of countless gym battles, however, and would not be so easily cowed. "Meet it head-on with a Mega Punch!

There was a resounding crack as the two competitors dashed to meet in the center of the imagined field, Politoed's curled fist, connecting with the three pearls that lined Tauro's lowered skull. Their inertia stopped cold, the meter-tall amphibian, and the charging bovine struggled against one another, dazed by connection, but unwilling to falter in front of their trainers.

Misty sneered at him, but Ash just narrowed his eyes. "Dig deep and stay low!" Ash roared. "Lift Politoed up, and crash right through!"

Tauros sank in his stance, and dug his powerful hooves into the grass. Politoed seemed like it would hold fast, at first, it's sticky webbed feet planted firmly into the grass, but Tauros had upset the likes of Dragonite and Metagross before, in this manner. When massive neck-muscles surged and snapped taught, Politoed proved only their equal and rose high into the air, borne aloft by Tauro's two massive horns.

Politoed sailed back to the grass as he was dumped over Tauros' shoulder and the massive bull continued his charge, before turning to survey the work. Ash too, looked on with approval. Politoed seemed unhurt by it's trip to the ground, and if Misty was bothered, she wasn't showing it, but Ash felt like it was an excellent start. "Again," he cried.

Misty waited for the perfect moment, until Politoed was well within strike range, before giving her command. "Bounce over it!" she yelled at the last moment.

Though Politoed's aerial dive was somewhat less awe inspiring than Gyarados', it was none the less effective at propelling the water type up and over the charging Tauros. The bull, like his trainer, having expected Politoed to stand and fight, lost its balance when it lowered for impact, and found nothing there to slow it's rapid momentum. Tauros bellowed as it careened to the ground.

If Ash hadn't noticed her smirk before, he was noticing it then. "Is that all you've got?" she chided.

Ash grinned, feeling his blood pumping hard. "Not even close! Right Tauros?" He pointed forward once more. "Horn Attack!"

Misty ordered her Pokemon to Bounce over the attack and again, when he attempted a second time, laughing all the while, as though she were playing a game of keep-away. She liked that it was breathing some life into Ash, and she was in no hurry to end it. She knew, though, that she had best think of something fast, as this was a game she would likely lose if it kept up. Tauros had the stamina and the pacing to keep this up all day, and Politoed, whom she favored as a sweeping attacker, did not.

She ordered the next Bounce evasion just a fraction of a second earlier than she normally would have, hoping that the increased time and distance it would afford her on the next pass could be put to good use. She almost bit her lip, as Tauros raised his head in equal measure to his springing counterpart, and nearly scored a hit for her arrogance. As Politoed cleared the charging bulls horns, it tucked and rolled on the other side, coming up to face it's attacker long before Tauros could right his momentum, and turn around.

She wondered what attack would serve her best, while Ash called for a quick about-face, Tauros ground his hooves into the turf in front of her, and at the last moment, she made a decision that curled the corner of her lips insidiously.

"Politoed, Swagger!"

Her Pokemon, across from her gave off a faint red shimmer, then, as it crossed it's arms and made the taunting maneuver complete by standing lax, giving no impression that it saw Ash's Pokemon as any real threat. She could literally feel the air move as Tauros stamped hard at the dirt in anger. Ash's reaction, if anything, was even more satisfying.

Ash, gripping his hands to the side, howled for blood, as though he'd been on the receiving end of the gesture as well. "Horn Attack!"

And off Tauros went, like a shot, tearing the distance to his target and kicking up clumps of grass with the effort. Another Bounce sent Politoed right over, the same as before, and Tauros, too caught up in his own disoriented anger barreled right on through...and kept charging, straight at Ash.

Though the sudden pain stole his breath, he felt more keenly the tingle of deja vu than the sting of impact, as Tauros collided with his hip and dumped him neatly to the ground. He worked himself shakily back to his feet, preparing to lock an annoyed look on his opponent, but then stopped short when he heard the resounding splash the bull had made upon it's short descent to the water, off the edge of the cliff.

He turned, witching his Pokemon kick up a huge geyser of water as it hit the surf like a stone, a stunned expression plastered across his face. He hadn't expected that, for whatever reason, though they had just recently been seated at the precipice's edge, fishing. He had not maintained a crucial awareness of it's boundaries, having been so caught up in the aggression between himself and Misty.

Just as he was trying to consider his next move, Misty spared him the trouble, coming up to stand beside him, "That's _my _point." She said with poorly restrained satisfaction, as she recalled Politoed over her shoulder, kissing the poke ball in compliment, before sticking it back under her jacket, as had become customary for her.

Ash knit his brows, nothing bothering to turn to face her, as they both stood watching Tauros furiously paddle his muscular, but thin legs in an effort to keep his head above the surface of the water. "How do you figure?"

"I said Knockout _or Ringout._" Misty explained.

Ash flattened out his eyebrows, finally realizing what she'd meant by R-O. He ended up giving her an incredulous stare, but Misty just waved it away.

"My point. One – nothing. Best of three ." She offered, with more sarcasm than sympathy, before strolling casually back to her position.

He wanted to tell her how ridiculous he though it was to win because your opponent ran off a cliff, but he thought better of it, when he realized just how ridiculous it _did _sound, and not exactly for reasons that would be supportive to the argument. Besides, neither he nor Tauros himself seemed to have any way of getting the bull Pokemon back up on the shelf, even if he could swim his way to the not so distant shore, short of returning him to his poke ball That would basically be as good as a knockout, in any case.

He huffed, and turned again to the battle. Selecting his second Pokemon with a slide of his fingers from the front of his belt to the back of it, he threw forth Bulbasaur's poke ball He figured it would be best to go with a solid type advantage, and the image of Bulbasaur hurling whatever Pokemon she chose into the surf via Vine Whip seemed very enjoyable to him.

Of course, Misty selected a Pokemon that was not likely to be thrown anywhere. At least, nowhere it couldn't easily return from. Staryu soon hovered before Bulbasaur, just a few feet off the ground, seeming to issue challenge with it's poly-tone call of "Hyah!" Still, neither combatant could deny, _he _had the type advantage.

"Razor Leaf!" Ash cried, pointing to the intended target who quickly zipped away to Misty's call of- "Dodge it!"

The order stood, and soon, Staryu was weaving and turning like a jet-fighter, banking away from, and over streams of sharp-edged leaves whistling this direction and that, more than once, forcing the two combatants to duck more than once. Still soured (and a bit sore) from his impact with Tauros, and loss of the point because of it, Ash wondered why in the world they'd decided to battle in close proximity. When he saw Misty, just laughing away, though, it did return some levity to him.

Eventually, Bulbasaur's attack did strike true, causing Staryu to twirl to the ground, practically imbedding itself like a shuriken in the dirt. It seemed to regain it's balance, easy enough, though it was a little dazed from the hit, and no longer seemed able, or at least so willing to take to the sky. Ash saw his plans coming to beautiful fruition.

"Wrap Staryu up in Vine Whip!" Ash called, and Bulbasaur, all to eager to claim a victory, given his previous defeat against Steelix, carried the order out. Staryu, in spite of the hit it had taken, turned a defiant and stunningly rapid back-flip away from the approaching snare, as Misty commanded it again to avoid the attack. It proved futile, though. The vines came on, twist and spin as hard as it might, could not tear off the unrelenting grass type.

Bulbasaur reeled it in, with determined force, grunting out "Bulba-saur," in pace with it's left-right backpedal against Staryu's struggling efforts. Eventually, when Ash felt that Bulbasaur had a solid reign over Misty's Pokemon, he gave his follow up command. "Throw it into the ocean!"

He looked up, smirking wildly, expecting to see a look of surprise, or at least irritation on Misty's face, but there was only a smile there. Not even really that vengeful of one, though something told him she was not out of cards to play. Her expression, one of legitimate thrill, made his expression transform identically, and he resumed his focus on the battle at hand.

Sure enough, Ash's suspicions proved correct, as Bulbasaur trudged to the edge of the field, and reared up, nearly utilizing enough draw-back in his swing to put Staryu behind him.

"Water Gun!" Misty cried, at the precise moment that Staryu was held suspended just a few feet above the grass-type's head.

Staryu fired the jet of water down at it's stalwart opponent, not hurting him in the least. His throw, however, was stalled by the blow, and at such a close range, he could not prevent several follow ups.

"Water Gun, Water Gun, Water Gun!" Misty shouted over and over again, building to crescendo. She wasn't sure that the attacks were going to accomplish much, (though honestly, Ash and Bulbasaur's attack-plan did not worry her much either) but she intended to take every free hit offered in this silly position Ash had put his Pokemon in.

Each pulse of water poured down over Bulbasaur, and though they hardly caused him any real discomfort, they were beginning to get annoying. He looked sidelong at his trainer, with a frown that could not have more clearly said "Hey Ash, get me out of this mess," than if Bulbasaur had said it aloud.

With a quickly returning smirk, Ash pantomimed as if he were grabbing hold of something, and bending it sharply with both hands, and though it was not a simple command, his Pokemon seemed to understand all too clearly. Bulbasaur's vines quickly went to work, grabbing and turning the offending stalk out of the way, bending one of Staryu's five pliable arms back to that the stream of pressurized water was no longer aimed at him.

Misty ducked and then pivoted to the side, determined more than anything, not to hear her sister's complaining about getting their expensive outfit wet, as the tail end of the most recent water attack flew her way. Now it was her turn to look ahead with a glare, but the sight of Ash laughing wholeheartedly, and not with any sense of avarice, made the look wither. Soon, she was smiling again and not just because of Ash. Well, mostly because of him. The young trainer neglected, of course, to note that Staryu could fire from any of it's five appendages.

Soon, water was pouring down over Bulbasaur again, and once more, that tired, irritated look came to rest on Ash again. Once more, Misty was the one laughing.

Ash decided that now was the time to end it. "Throw it to the ground, but hold on tight."

Bulbasaur whipped the smaller Pokemon to the dirt practically burying it like a sign-post by one of it's arms. It blasted him in the face with another Water Gun for the effort. Bulbasaur snarled, even the normally ineffective water-type attack starting to sting after repeated use.

"Solar Beam!"

Another water-type attack came, but was most likely evaporated in the face of the gold beam of heat-energy, unleashed by his tiny friend. Enough was enough. Bulbasaur's super-effective grass-type move put the offending starfish Pokemon off the cliff and sent it skipping across the water like a rock- even burnt a few blades of grass at the cliff's edge with it's severity.

Misty watched her Pokemon float to the surface, quite knocked out, as Ash rushed to his Pokemon, and threw it skyward in triumph. Truthfully, she'd known that Staryu didn't have much of a chance in that match up, but it had been good experience and she couldn't rightly deny that to any of her Pokemon. Besides, she reasoned, as he withdrew Staryu and put the poke ball again to her lips before stowing it, this way, it was sudden death. A victory for either of them here, would mean absolute victory. She knew exactly who she was going to pick.

Unfortunately, as she cast Gyarados' ball onto the grass between them she realized that Ash had not thrown one of his own and so she knew exactly which Pokemon Ash would bring to bear, as well.

With a loud whistle, Pikachu was at Ash's side. From the looks of her pika-pal, Misty could tell that the little dynamo had secretly been raring for this battle all along. Maril, still off in the dunes up the hill, perked above the grass, wondering where her playmate had gone off to so suddenly.

Unlike most opponents she pitted the massive sea-serpent against, Ash and Pikachu stood without uncertainty or apprehension in their expressions, only a longing and determination that she realized she had not seen since Ash had returned to Kanto; that though she recognized having seen it many times before during their travels together, he had not made that face at all this day, or the time she'd seen him last, several days previously. She also realized, with a fluttering in her stomach, that this, more than any tacked on, overly sweet smile he'd given her today, however heart-racing it might have been, was the face she'd most desired to see him make. The look seemed to take in the great challenge before him, personified by Gyarados' massive form and say plainly "I _can _win."

But, muscling those rabid thoughts down, she told herself that, in spite of the disproportionate size of the combatants, Pikachu did in fact have the definitive type-advantage. In this case, Gyarados' size only made him a larger target to hit. Victory was very much within Ash's reach and still, she intended to make him fight for every inch of it.

Deciding to press the attack, and keep the final match set to the beat of her own drum, at least, she leveled a finger at her and Gyarados' furry opponent. "Flamethrower- then dodge to the side!"

Gyarados didn't have anything in his repertoire that would be type-effective against Pikachu, but at least this move was more on the unpredictable side. Flames poured from the sea-dragon's mouth out onto the battlefield, but of course, Pikachu was long gone, having responded to Ash's command of "Agility!" before the fire met the ground. When it cleared, there was only Ash there, quick-stepping backwards to avoid the burning grass.

Her preemptive dodge, combined with the fact that Ash nearly stepped back over the edge, disrupted the aim and timing of Pikachu's followup Thunderbolt, which crackled dangerously past Gyarados as it pitched to the slide. Using the sideways momentum, the huge serpent swung forward to heed the call of "Bite!" from it's trainer.

Pikachu hardly needed to hear "Agility!" before zipping away from the massive, toothsome maw bearing down on him. Gyarados, closing its eyes for the kill, was too late to choke up on the strike, and got a mouthful of dirt instead of the fading after-image of Pikachu.

"Iron Tail!" Ash called, seeing that Gyarados had buried itself to the fangs in the cliff shelf, and did not seem to be able to break free.

However, this was a trick she utilized often, much to the woe of her sisters. Gyarados' fangs were no more held by the ground than they would have been by any other substance. Gyarados were known to bite through the steel bulkheads of ocean liners when agitated. Her Pokemon was at a striking disadvantage in this kowtowed position of course, but while her opponent was paying attention to Gyarados' head...

"Aqua tail!"

Pikachu's high-speed tuck and roll to gather for a full somersault Iron Tail attack, may as well have been the tiny Pokemon rolling itself into the shape of a high-speed fast-ball ready to be smacked for the bleachers, as Gyarados' huge tail reared around and slammed into the rodent full force. At many times his size and weight, the powerful appendage sent Pikachu soaring. Luckily for Ash, the blow was more glancing than full-on, and Pikachu soared straight up in the air like a foul ball over home plate than a home run.

Pikachu landed on his rump, behind Gyarados, head lolling in circles from dizziness and more than a little pain. Misty called for a follow-up attack, hoping to capitalize on the opportunity, but her Pokemon did not, and could not heed the command. Pikachu's Static ability had kicked in upon contact, and left Gyarados' entire lower body unresponsive. With his front end still buried by the teeth in the turf, the sea-monster was going nowhere.

Ash, who had almost inhaled his balled fist at the sight of the grievous hit, now let own an audible moan of relief. "Thank _Arceus_."

What followed was a series of urgent cries of support for each of their ailing Pokemon; Misty to her paralyzed Gyarados, and Ash Pikachu, who was now trying to stand up, and failing due to extreme dizziness.

Pikachu was the first one up, though obviously still shaken. Ash called for a Thunderbolt, but it's execution was badly aimed, and soared out over the ocean without effect. Another missed its mark, as Pikachu wobbled off to the side, and left a steaming pock-mark in the ground. A third was aimed true, but never hit the massive water-type.

"Protect!" Misty cried in desperation, and though the Pokemon still couldn't move in any capacity to dodge or attack, the cyan-colored light-shield sprang to life all around the Pokemon, and transferred the current to the ground ineffectually.

"Again!" Ash shouted, slamming both of his balled fists down, as though on an invisible surface in front of them. He knew he had Misty on the run, and he would not relent.

"Protect!" Misty responded in kind, and again, the barrier took the brunt of the blow.

"_Again!_" Ash hollered, jumping into the air.

Misty called for the move a third time, and almost couldn't believe it when the maneuver worked a third time, knowing that the move decreased in likelihood of success sharply with each repeated use.

Ash took in a deep breath, and prepared to bellow "Thunder!" at the top of his lungs, but something split the air before he could manage it. A shrill scream carried down to them from the direction of congregation, to the distant south. Soon Ash, Gyarados, Pikachu, and even Maril, had their heads in the air trying to identify the source. Misty, however, flew into sudden and panicked action.

That was her _cue_after all.

The redhead dashed out and leapt onto her Pokemon's back, just as it was coming to, and in a series of elongated, scrambling motions, that showed none of her former concern with the short skirt she wore, worked her way up to Gyarados' head. "Look after Maril for a minute, I gotta go! I'll be back," she offered, as she tugged on Gyarados' crest, veering away. As the sea-serpent slithered from the cliff and smoothly into the water, she turned and hurled her purse back to dry land. "Hold this!"

Ash caught the huge bag in a cradled embrace, though he couldn't muster much reaction beyond that. He looked down to the purse and then dropped it to the dirt in defiant protest, once he thought about what he was doing. He looked over to Pikachu. "...What?" he managed finally, as though his friend would have some answer.

Pikachu only looked back at him, just as confused. "Pika?"

Ash looked back out to sea, and yelled to the fast withdrawing Misty, though he was sure she was too far away to hear "_What?_"

He looked down again, to see Maril jumping up and down beside Pikachu, looking out towards Misty's slowly shrinking silhouette on the sunlit water-line, evidently none to thrilled at being left behind.

"_Whaaat?_" he cried, snapping his head forward, his eyes widening in incredulity.

With a growl, he whipped a poke ball from his belt and hurled it to the ground so hard that it bounced, before spitting Charizard onto the ground before him.

"Get on, you two." Ash said, waving out before himself, in frustration. He glowered down at the purse as he moved to follow and reluctantly, with much dread, slung the article over his shoulder, tucking it under his jacket as much as possible, to keep it out of sight. He muttered a few choice words before stepping up onto Charizard's haunches, and appropriating himself on the dragon's back. With a nudge of Ash's ankles, and a powerful beat of scaly wings, they were off the ground.

"Follow her." Ash explained, pointing past Charizard's periphery to the fast distancing girl. The fire-type roared compliantly, and took to the sky, hardly seeming to notice the extra weight.

Misty, only a short distance away, did not see the boy coming from the blue skies, preoccupied with tearing her blouse off over her head, and working her skirt down past her knees without losing her balance on Gyarados' back. The role called for her to be barefoot as well, but she had only managed to work off one of her flats, and that had fallen into the water. She decided she didn't care. She could already hear Daisy repeating her cue impatiently.

Ash, as he closed, felt his shock and dismay deflate into weaker emotions, on sight of the disrobing gym-leader. The person riding on the back of the scaly monster was not, could not be the same skinny girl he'd traveled alongside those years ago. Not hardly. The girl stripping off her clothing and casting it into the sea seemed more something torn from the flushed recollection of more than one awkwardly remembered early-morning dream, some wild fantasy of his deepest, darkest and most confusing unconsciousness, than anything real. If he'd believed, in those few long moments of deliberate and intense staring, that he was still looking at that same girl, he was sure he would have ripped his eyes away with intense objection. As it was, he felt his jaw click shut as he reclaimed the slack from it.

She was practically naked. This time, it was Ash who felt a burning in his cheeks. Luckily, the surreal nature of it passed him, when he realized what was actually happening and the intense knot of rampaging excitement in his throat turned to troubling, choking uneasiness, which thankfully vanished in it's entirely as he swallowed it back into his gut. She had a swimsuit on underneath her outfit, similar to the supplementary wet-suit she'd sported during their last meeting, he supposed, and since she was Misty again, with the dreamlike nature of the moment stolen away, he was determined not to notice how nice she looked in it. Or how nice most of her looked, out of it, given the circumstance.

Misty slapped hands over herself at the sight of him, but her blush was one of embarrassment, rather than hormonal confusion. Without explanation, she hurled her one remaining shoe at him, when he pulled alongside her, skimming the water on Charizard's back. It popped Ash over the head.

He rubbed his skull in continued confusion, and for a moment, consciously missed his hat. Until screams followed up the physical abuse. It all seemed like a bunch of strung together insults, cuss-words and angry complaints that came at him too fast to really comprehend. Most of it was getting lost in the sound of the surf and rushing air anyways.

"-dumbass! Why cant you ever listen to me?" she swore. "All I asked was for you to stay there! You're always doing stupid crap like this! I swear, I'm never going to invite you to one of these things agai—ASH!

"My EYES are up _here_." He glanced over from where she was clutching her chest, toward the hand that was pointing diagonally to her glowering face. Her whole face was splotchy red with anger, her mouth a hard line of rage.

He wondered if he could even explain that. He hadn't even realized that he'd been looking. He certainly hadn't wanted to. He opened his mouth to make what he knew was going to be a pitiful attempt, but he was cut off by another scream, this one louder, and more urgent than the last two.

The two Pokemon trainers snapped their heads forward; Misty out of panic, Ash out of concern. The expression on both their faces merged into synchronous distress, when they saw the long black shapes in the water, some twenty count, all converging on the stage. The nearest were already rearing above the surface, revealing the true nature of their presence.

"Gyarados," Misty breathed, her anger stolen. "That's a lot of Gyarados."

"That's not part of the show, is it?" Ash asked, though he was somewhat less distracted than Misty, and hoping not to raise her ire.

Misty shook her head. Both trainers practically leapt off their mounts as one of the Gyarados rushing the pontoon smashed off a section of the riser with it's powerful tail, narrowly missing one of the performers, who at this distance appeared to be Daisy. "It's a Frenzy!"

Ash thought he might offer a plan of action, but Misty was already pointing seaward. "You veer around and come in from behind. Fight off as many as you can from that direction. Violet should be back stage. If you use all of your Pokemon, the two of you should be able to hold out, there."

Without waiting for his reply, Misty and her own Gyarados were off, cutting the water at great speed.

He hollered after her as she cut away. "What are you going to do?"

"The show must go on, Ash!" she yelled back.

She watched Ash kick up a rooster-tail in the water as he shot away at blistering speed, preparing his round-about appearance on the scene. She studied his expected course for a moment, before deciding that it was sufficient to keep him hidden from the crowd. She was, after all, hoping to come out of this with her reputation intact.

She screamed in, over the water, cutting between small crafts filled with reporters and spectators who were thankfully still either fishing or staring at the stage, content that this was one-hundred percent part of the performance. Her arrival, center-stage knocked three other hungry Gyarados out of the way through sheer bulk and speed alone. Bravely, and perhaps stupidly, she turned her back on them. They were to appear to be with her, after all. Why would the Dragon Queen fear her own dragons?

Her sisters, staring dumbfounded at her only blinked as she delivered her entry line.

"What ho, Milotic?" She snarled, as loudly and as powerfully ash she could, knowing that she'd have to be heard all the way to shore over the muted roars of many Gyarados. "Left you, thy servitude, while thy pledge to me stood! Atone thee of this deceit, henceforth, else upon the back of dead Samurott must your oath to me, fall!"

In front of her, out of sight, she spun a finger horizontally, indicating that she wished for her sisters to hurry through their lines.

"My oath to you is ended," Daisy managed, after a moment of open-mouthed staring. Lily pushed in front of her, as though defensively, Prince Samurott posturing before his love. Misty took one look at her next oldest sister, and suddenly felt much more comfortable in her own revealing swimsuit. Prince Samurott held up an item for the Dragon Queens inspection. Two items in fact; both halves of a broken King's Rock, the crown that she'd used to enslave Milotic for on hundred years, in exchange for sovereignty over the sea. A binding agreement broken both physically, and in spirit, by their love for one another.

"Retreat to thy deep ravine, and return, most humbled to thy repose. " Lily spat the couplet with very well-acted anger though Misty wondered just how much of it was growing panic, as she raised the long stage-sword from her hip and leveled it with a quivering hand. The shadow over Lily, the one quickly rising over her own back grew long indeed.. "Or we shall see what color you stain these waves."

With her other hand, Lily gently tossed her a stage-mic. Misty quickly pinned it to the strap of her top, and clicked it on. The frenzied sea-serpents were closing in from all sides, and she could feel and smell fishy breath on her back. As it was, she couldn't even begin to remember the beginning of her line, and so flustered, she just let out an angry scream which seemed to work just as well. "-drag thee to the bottom of the ocean, where the colors of your blood will not show!"

And then, the melee began. Pokemon were out everywhere. All five of her active Pokemon, Lily's Dewgong, Whiscash, Finneon, Sealeo, Wingull, and Seaking, Along with Daisy's Shelder, Vaporeon, Luvdisc, Mantyke, Shellos, and newly acquired Swanna were out and in the fray. It was absolute chaos, and yet, controlled, in a way. Her sisters made a living, after all, making a spectacle out of battle, something that was by nature, chaotic. Her own commands to her Pokemon were somewhat more utilitarian, having made sure that her microphone was switched back off until the closing act, but she could only do so much for the sake of style, while she concentrated on dodging the telegraphed thrusts and swipes of Lily's blunted sword somewhat convincingly.

Meanwhile, Ash, searing in over the open water-line had been forced to do a full roll in order to evade an unexpected hyper-beam from beneath the surface of the water! His descent ruined somewhat, Charizard and all three of his riders made a one point landing, before being hurled in all directions. They came up fighting, all the same, even Ash, who had to dodge a wild flail or two from Violet, as he rolled into the back of her legs and dropped her to the deck.

"Like, get off!" she protested, giving him a little kick to his departing heel, though he was already up, and truthfully, had been the one pinned under her. He didn't bother giving it any thought, though. He just evacuated the contents of his belt, Dispensing Tauros, Bulbasaur, Snorlax and, last but not least, Psyduck onto the open back-stage floor.

Nine black lines, like torpedoes beneath the water, swam in with alarming speed. Lily, following his line of sigh, ceased her complaining, and was on her feet.

"You should get your Pokemon out." Ash reminded her, trying not to look away from the approaching shapes.

Lily patted her waist, and then gasped in alarm. "I left them in the changing tent!"

Ash didn't bother to condescend. It was just an unfortunate thing, that he would have to work in spite of. Thinking quickly, he sprang to Charizard's back once more. "I'll try to lead them away! Pikachu and the others will help you!"

And before Lily could protest, the young trainer was away.

Back out front, Lily ducked sharply to avoid the snapping maw of one Gyarados, which Misty had neatly, and somewhat charismatically sidestepped with split-second timing, in order to keep up with the facade of being on their side. Both of her sisters gasped at how close it was, wondering just how perilously far Misty was going to take this.

"You know, maybe now's not a good time to mention this, but:" Daisy began, pausing to order a Bubble-beam against a slowly encroaching sea-monster. "You really butchered that first line. It's supposed to be 'while _thine _pledge to me still _stands_', not 'while_ thy_ pledge to me _stood_', Misty.''

"And what was with that _screech_there at the end," Lily teased, also taking the opportunity to banter while their microphones were muted. "Totally amateur."

Misty laughed aloud, dipping under another roundhouse slash of Lily's sword. "Yeah, well, you'll be relieved to know I've decided to give up show-business."

* * *

Ash roared away, back out to sea, making as much wild noise as he could. He was satisfied to see that he had drawn most of the massive sea-dwelling Pokemon away from the pontoon, right up until the sparkling lines of Hyper Beam attacks cut uncomfortably close to his flight-path. Leaning to the side, Charizard following his shift, they dipped and turned sharply, cutting under and then around the furious rays of heat and energy. He continued his course southward, keeping low to the water, and never so far ahead that the Gyarados would lose interest, he hoped.

He failed to notice the swelling water in front of him, in his flight, and by the time he turned to see the huge, red-scaled monster rise out of the waves, he knew that it was too late. The shiny Gyarados opened it's mouth, and within it's fanged recess, a ball of the same white-hot light he'd only narrowly dodged before began to form. He locked up completely, thinking that he was soon to be roast to a cinder. Luckily, Charizard had seen the huge beast long before him, and cut another aerial roll that nearly dumped Ash into the sea. He clung tight in surprise, and continued to until they leveled off.

He blinked. Had he just seen someone familiar? He felt like he must have passed very close. He felt like maybe he'd felt someone's hair brush across his cheek.

"Nice flying. I thought for a second you were going to take my head off!" A familiar voice shouted up to him.

Ash cut back around to see who had spoken, and was nearly blinded, as the massive Hyper Beam let fly, flash-boiling a divot in the water, nearly all the way back to the pontoon. Once he'd blinked the spots from his eyes, and felt Charizard settle his course next to the Red Gyarados, his gaze fell on a familiar face to go with the familiar voice. It was Champion Lance. This was _his_Red Gyarados. The one Ash had seen him catch in Jhoto, years ago. He wasn't sure he could be more relieved.

"Thanks for the save!" Ash managed. It seemed like every time he bumped into Lance, the dragon-trainer was doing at least one thing to save everyone's butt, big-time.

"It's not over yet!" Lance called, and sent his gaze back out ahead with a point. Two Gyarados were still encroaching on the stage, and only just a few had been scattered by Lance's Hyper Beam.

"Focus on the ones out here," Ash called. "Pikachu has the stage handled."

Lance cast him a skeptical look, that was erased as a bolt of lightning cracked into one of the Gyarados harassing Lily and his distant troupe, and sent it fleeing. "Trust me," Ash said, pulling hard on the blades of Charizard's wingtips, and pushing down with his feet, letting Charizard know he wanted an aerial stall. Silently, the pair of trainers agreed that they would let the approaching Gyarados come to them.

They got a little more than they bargained for, when the closing group convened short of them, by many yards, and stood tall out of the water, roaring and thrashing about.

"Looks like they're setting up for a Twister attack," Lance noted.

Ash didn't like the sounds of that. His look must've said so, because the Champion began giving directions almost immediately after glancing his way. "Best way to scare off Gyarados is with Dragon type moves. They seem real tough, but when it gets right down to it, Gyarados are just big wanna-bes."

Lance smirked, even as the giant beast beneath him snarled in protest. "Except mine, of course," he said with a reassuring pat.

Ash shared in that smirk, thinking he'd crossed paths with at least one other Gyarados that was, in fact, the real deal. The pressure of the situation forced his mind off the battle that had been cut short, as the wild thrashing of the serpents before them, became synchronous rotations and a deep whirlpool began to form between them. With a nod, both trainers set to work.

"DragonBreath!"

"Dragon Rage!"

Back on stage, through overwhelming force, all of their collected force managed to drive back the horde, Misty's Gyarados dragging one final aggressor back into the water by it's tail and shaking it violently to scare it away, before receding back into the depths itself, leaving her the lone remaining antagonist. She gave a snarl, and weaved a few more shots from the blade desperately, before allowing Lily to run her through. She cradled the sword, which was little more than a shaped metal rod in terms of sharpness, beneath her arm, and took a staggering step away. She fell to her knees heavily, and pretended to draw a deep, ragged breath, nearly forgetting to switch her microphone back on.

"Alas, I am defeated," she ad-libbed, lamely, even though she was pretty sure that wasn't the last line, or even really all that close to it. Deciding to really punish her sisters, for their earlier comment, she decided that she wasn't quite finished yet. She stood, to watch her sisters eyes bug out in protest, as she continued her over-dramatized backwards stagger. She stumbled and backpedaled all the way to the end of the stage, hearing the laughter already at her near half-minute long dramatics. But, deciding that was hardly enough, she left out a long, gurgling, groaning death-rattle, and flopped over the end of the stage with a splash.

Her descent directly coincided with the massive burst of blue fire and resounding thunderclap from behind the stage as Ash, Lance and Pikachu dissipated the last of the Gyarados with their combined attacks. The crowd was silent for a long, tense moment, as if unsure of what to make of the spectacle. Lily was sure she could hear someone cough, all the way up on shore. Then, all at once, they went berserk. As soon as the curtain dropped, Daisy slapped her forehead, staring dumbfounded towards the outrageous applause and cheering from just beyond it. She looked at Misty as she came clambering back up onto stage right, and tried to look severe, but couldn't really hold on to it in the face of both her sisters telltale smirk, and the ongoing appreciation from outside.

"Amateur, huh?" Misty said, setting the tip of the prop sword against the stage and leaning on it casually. "Looks like I stole your show."

Lily snorted. "Yeah right."

Daisy just laughed. "That's the first slap-stick we've ever done."

Ash, a rather disheveled looking Violet, and Lance, who never seemed to look disheveled ever, still wearing his board-shorts and sunglasses, stepped out onto the main stage, just then. They moved to congratulate each other, but Violet had already set the curtain to rise for their curtain call.

Sheepishly, as the audience cheered before them, Misty looked to Ash, and grinned, taking her bow along side her sisters. Ash, as he bowed with Violet and Lance, the supposed "stage crew", grinned back at her. For just a split second, each though they saw a twinge of pink on the other's smiling cheeks.

* * *

Holiday looked glumly towards the slowly disappearing pontoon and the little stretch of sea-shore. Their plan was a bust, it seemed. It looked like everything was wrapping up now. No real commotion. No panic either, really. He thought he could even hear cheering in the distance. The worst part, he thought, was that he hadn't even gotten to see the end of the show. Holiday hated when things went unfinished.

He watched the long dark shapes pass to either side of the boat, with a sigh. It had seemed like a pretty good idea. When one nudged the boat a little, a gasp made him turn towards Doc.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" He asked his partner, who was still putting oars to the water at breakneck speed, pulling so hard that it seemed like the boat would soon be skipping across the water, rather than gliding through it.

He looked overboard at the fin that cut the water, right along side their craft, nearly the size of the rowboat itself, as though the answer should have been obvious.

"Oh, grow up." Holiday said with a long roll of his eyes. He dug in the backpack between his knees. "They cant even see us, remember?" He held up the glass spray-bottle for Doc's inspection. He'd even labeled it with masking tape and magic marker.

Doc flattened his considerable brow. "Now's a great time to tell me!"

Holiday snorted. "I kind of thought it was assumed." Quickly, the admin threw himself into mocking pantomime. "Gee, Holiday, are you gonna use that stuff that you spent all that time making for just this sort of occasion?" he questioned in a sinusy, deep mumble. "Hmn, I wonder, _am_ I going to use that stuff that totally has _unlimited_ application for our current situation, and which I just so happen to have on me, ready to be used at _any_ moment I choose? I _guess _I should. And then, in addition to that, I guess I should let everyone _know_, since otherwise the decision might seem completely out of fucking left-field!" he ended in a roar.

It was now Doc's turn to roll his eyes. "Cool story, bro."

Holiday just reclined and grumbled. This operation had been no dice, which meant they had to go all the way back to the boat-rental yard if Holiday wanted to see his deposit again, then follow the kid all the way to wherever the fuck he was headed next and try again there. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Next time, lets just kick his ass."

"Agreed." Doc said, with another solid pull on the oars. "So where do you wanna grab something to eat-

Both glanced around for a moment, until they sorted out who's cross-transceiver was ringing. Holiday had not yet changed his something suitably obnoxious, and so both of them still had the default ring-tone. It turned out to be Holidays, which was really no surprise, since rarely did anyone try to get a hold of Doc, unless it was Holiday.

"Yeah, boss."

Doc couldn't hear the sound of the bosses voice over the roll of the ocean or the turn of the oars, but he tried hard to listen anyways, even coming so far as to stop rowing altogether, as Holiday's face became very stern, looking down at the wrist-device.

"Yeah." Holiday offered. "ASAP." He slapped the cover back over the communication device, and looked up at his partner.

"What's up?" Doc asked, with no shortage of curiosity, though he would not have imagined in a million years that he would hear what Holiday told him next.

"Kazuo wants me back in Orre to do some work on-site at Realgam. Looks like you're gonna be on your own for a while."

Doc's eyes widened. "How long?"

Holiday reclined easily, though the unamused look on his face hardly faded. "Month. Maybe longer."

Doc felt his face crinkle up in consternation. "So what am I supposed to do?"

Holiday laughed. "Don't worry, Bro." he waved his hands in the air sarcastically. "With powers of deduction like yours, I'm sure you'll think of something."

* * *

"You think Ash will do alright without you?"

Brock glanced downward, from where he had been over looking, noticing that it was Max talking to him,and not Dawn. The elder trainer offered a resigned shrug. "It was Ash's decision to travel alone. I can only really hope that he was prepared to do that." The statement didn't have any bitterness an it, it was simply a face-value observation. Still, something of a worried look crossed his face before he could dismiss it.

"You could've stayed." Max observed. "It didn't seem like he wanted you guys to go."

Brock didn't think it was that simple, though. Sure, he could have, and had seriously considered, finding Ash on his own, as soon as this had all began and sticking to the boy's side regardless of what he said. Ash, after all, was impulsive, and would undoubtedly come to have his regrets on the matter. But, Brock had not.

"There's a difference between wanting and needing something," Brock said, much like the teacher Max had always somewhat considered him. "Ash wants his friends around, but honestly..."

He thought about all the times he'd watched Ash succeed where nobody should have, though granted, he had his failings. All the times he'd watched Ash pick himself up, after being knocked flat on his back and go back for seconds, sometimes with his help, but most often without it,. All the times he'd watched Ash outgrow some poor habit, or character flaw, though he still held on to the ones that made him who he was.

Even if he and Ash were always going to be friends, Somewhere along the line, Ash had outgrown the need for him. Less and less was Brock the knowing tutor, the ever vigilant guardian and guide, as he had once been. More and more Ash had been the one teaching him, guiding him, as of late.

It had taken a lot of effort to come to terms with the situation over the past two weeks, but until Ash's defeat, he honestly had never thought too much about it. Their relationship with one another had actually changed, had been changing for the past several years, he guessed. It had taken the recent trial to really make him see- it was not, after all, that common to give much thought to the workings of a friendship, the actual give and take, while they were still there with you, all day, every day. There had to be something to draw it into question.

When Ash had left them, had told them all so easily, that it was his intent to carry on alone, he'd realized, even if he'd been unwilling to admit it, and let the matter drop, that Ash had simply outgrown him, in a very real capacity. Ash no longer needed someone to fill the shoes he filled. Not as a friend, but as a companion. Ash still wanted them to be friends with him, still wanted them to be around, but...

Even if Ash didn't realize it yet, even if he hadn't came to the same conclusion Brock knew that the gaps that Ash needed filled in his life, if he did in fact need any filled at all, no longer included room for an older brother figure such as him. Ash could no longer gain from it; having moved on from that dynamic. If anything, Ash was becoming more akin to that himself, than needing one.

Brock could see Ash in his own shoes, some day, guiding another Trainer with patient advice someday soon. In truth he had been something like that to May during the beginning of her career. If it were not for the singular, personal drive that swept the young trainer along, he could very easily envision Ash as a coach or mentor to some brash young battler not unlike his ten-year-old self, the same as Brock had been at his age.

"He doesn't need us stepping on his toes, anymore." Brock explained.

"He seemed a little angry," Max explained, with poorly hidden worry.

Brock nodded. He'd seen it too; expected Ash to flare up at the news. "He'll get over it, once everything settles down. He's just a little mixed up."

Max nodded, seeing the logic. Ash still had lingering doubts. Those would go away once Ash could get things into gear and start his travels in earnest. Once he fell into stride, and learned how to do all the things that Brock had formerly done for him on his own, everything would be better. It wasn't as though Ash could really be mad at him for taking his vacated spot, right? His looked must have still seemed skeptical, because Brock withdrew his pokegear.

"Here, I'll prove it to you." Brock was willing to bet that Ash was in a better mood already. "Call him, if you don't believe me."

Before Max could protest, Brock had already dialed, and set the gear, open in video-phone mode, into the junior trainer's fumbling hands.

It rang three times before someone picked it up.

"-because you're all wet!"

"Well I want to say hi, too! It's not like I'm gonna break your stupid gear!"

"Lay off! It's brand new!"

Soon, two face appeared on screen, each obviously trying to shoulder the other to take up more of the camera's range. "Hey, Max."

Brock, over Max's shoulder waved.

"Hey, Brock," this greeting too was delivered in unison, though Ash's delivery was belated somewhat by a sharp elbow in the ribs, as Misty swerved in to take up most of the screen.

"You'll never believe what happened." Misty yelped in excitement.

"Misty, he doesn't care about your dumb contribution-check." Ash complained, having to accept an auxiliary position on screen, over the gym-leaders shoulder.

"Like your invitation is such a big deal," Misty countered, rolling her eyes.

"It is!" Ash shot back.

Misty huffed, realizing that, more than likely, Ash was right. Hers was more a business success, than anything else. "Fine. You first then."

The camera flew wild as it was passed from one trainer to the other. When Ash finally straightened his gear out, and wobbled back into place, his beaming face practically took up the entire screen. Max and Brock shared a knowing look.

"About a hundred Gyarados attacked during Misty's Invita-

"More like twenty, actually."

"Who's telling this story, you or me?"

"Well tell it right, at least."

"Fine, sheesh...You know, I can tell why you're not a Sensational Sister. You have no appreciation for dramatic embellishment."

"You only know what that means because you heard Lily say it."

"Still true, though."

"Um, you were saying?"

"Well anyways, there were about twenty...

"...Huge..."He paused to see if Misty would provide amendment to this descriptor as well. With a dismissive look she allowed him the usage.

"...Gyarados –and they all rushed the stage, right? The whole beach, just a total madhouse, these things are everywhere. Well, Misty she's all "Oh no, Ash I'm so scared!"

"Was not!" Misty protested. "You are the biggest liar!"

Ash was too far gone, though, "And she ran off to go hide with her sisters!"

"I went to go battle along with my sisters!" Misty corrected. "Also, for the record, I had to deal with more Gyarados than you did –_while _saving my sister's water-show from total destruction, thank you!

"Yeah, with your sisters help!" Ash countered.

"Yeah, well remind me: who helped you, Mr. Big-shot?"

"Certainly not your sister!" Ash said with a chuckle, thinking that he'd completely bested her.

Misty just rolled her eyes, unabated by his sarcasm. "Yeah right. I'm guessing Lance did most of the work on your end!"

Pikachu piped up in defense of his own efforts, then, and Misty expanded her proclamation of doubt to include the new evidence. "And Pikachu fought off two of them, while you weren't even there!"

"Champion Lance was there?" Max and Brock both questioned, with some excitement.

"Yeah, that's the best part! I got to battle along side the Champ!" Ash hooted, obviously still a little star-struck.

"I flew out on Charizard, to draw them away, and here he comes out of nowhere, and I'm like 'Oh nooo!' and _whoosh_, I just barely miss him, while he's swimming up on his Red Gyarados, but then he's like "Hey Ash, what's up? I haven't seen you since you were in Hoenn.' all cool and stuff, and then he was like "Wanna team up? I mean, it's cool if you don't want to, I can see you totally got this." and so I let him, then we were all like _kaboom, pew-pew-pew_..." Ash detailed the rough layout of the battle using his hands, and included sound-effects for the sake of the continued narrative.

"It was probably more like, he kicked all the butt, while you fumbled around in his way." Misty concluded.

"No way, it went just like I said." Ash held firm against their doubting looks for a long while, but eventually, gave in. "Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but we did fight those last ones off, together," he finished, in support of his role in things, though his laugh let them know his overstatements were all in good fun.

"Anyways," he continued, digging in his pocket, "The best news of all is, after it was all over, Lance asked me if I wanted to attend the Elite Four training camp on Mandarin island!" Ash ripped a black card from his pocket and showed it off. He was practically giddy with excitement.

Max and Brock, both legitimately impressed, gawked at the invitation card in their friends hand, it's white one black script just barely legible over their video-phone connection. Sure enough, Lance's huge autograph adorned one end of it, written in silver ink.

"That's great, Ash!" Brock exclaimed.

"That's more than great, that's amazing!" Max corrected. "Only just a handful of trainers a year get invited to train with the Elite Four!"

"Great, make his head bigger, why don't you?" Misty said with a sigh, before adding sourly: "I wish I had gone first, now." Ash's news was going to be a tough act to follow.

"So what happened with you?" Brock offered, trying to devote his attention to her, and coercing Max to do the same, with a nudge.

"Yeah, you've got good news too, right?" Max asked, leadingly.

Before Misty could even reply, Ash groaned. "Boooooring!"

"You're boring!" Misty shot back.

Ash took his turn at making an unimpressed face. "He wrote you a check. It's not like it's an invitation to the Elite Four Training Camp." For emphasis, he flapped the black card in the air in front of her face. "All you and your sisters could talk about on the way back here was 'new quotes for construction, cut down the overhead cost, hire new personnel,' blah, blah blah."

"Well, if it's so boring, why don't you just carry your butt out of my office, then."

"Maybe I will!" Ash said, striding defiantly towards the door, off screen. Brock and Max could still hear him. "_Ooh, look at me, I'm Misty, I got an office, I'm a big corporate executive. Let me just stamp these papers and file these reports..._"

"Oh, will you shut it already!"

"I hope Max catches a hundred bug-Pokemon in Jhoto, and brings them all back here to see you!"

Misty picked up something from her table, what to Brock and Max seemed to be a water-bottle of some kind, and whipped it off-screen in the direction Ash had gone. They realized they realized that it must've hit him, when they heard a muffled "Ow!" before the sound of a door slamming shut.

Max and Brock shared a double-take before Misty had finally huffed and puffed enough to continue. "Where was I?" she asked, her features still flushed irritably, as she set to righting a few menial objects upset by her attack.

"The good news," Brock reminded her.

"About your check," Max added.

Misty nodded. "Yeah." Pausing for a long moment to collect her thoughts, and reclining into her desk chair, Misty tried to put it in the most exciting terms possible. "After the show was over, and we declared Lance the winner of the Invitational..."

She let another long second slip by, before deciding to reserve comment on what she'd seen upon weighing up the Champ's thirty-eight-pounder. She still hadn't told anyone that she'd found one of her own bobbers hanging from the lips of the whopping fish, and she figured that Ash's ego had gotten enough of a boost today, without finding out that he'd only narrowly missed the prize catch as well.

"...He decided that he'd had so much fun, he'd like to come back every year," Misty finished. "Well, Daisy told him that he would be first on the guest list, every year we could budget the event.

"On the spot, the guy whips out his checkbook, and says 'Which is going to be every year, from now on,' then writes this check with so many zeroes in it, Violet and Lily just about passed out." Misty rested both of her hands on her desk. "I won't say just how much it was for, just for the sake of confidentiality, but lets put it this way: If I wanted to have a whole new gym built from the ground up, right next door, and tear the old one to the ground, I'd still have enough money left over to fund events for the next ten years."

"Sounds very generous." Brock said definitively

"The Cerulean Gym must be worth over a million. That's a huge complex, and what with all the additions being made, it has to be getting closer to two." Max said, lending some sense of scope to the example given.

"Pretty close to it." Misty said with a nod. With this contribution, her Gym was in a more solid position than it ever had been, financially. Essentially, her and her sisters would want for nothing as far as facilities and amenities were concerned for the foreseeable future. That said, the prospect did put considerable pressure on her to perform, as well. The water-shows and coordinating of her sisters would only take the Cerulean City Gym so far in the champion's eyes, she knew. She would need to compete at level befitting Lance's generous offer, or else she would seem a sorry excuse for a Gym Leader, indeed. Still, she was prepared to rise to that challenge.

"That is really great news." Brock agreed.

Misty smiled, but shrugged her shoulders. "It's no training-camp invitation, but it's better than a kick in the pants."

They shared a laugh with each other, before Misty finally realized that between her and Ash they'd hardly let Max get a word in edgewise, when it had been him to call in the first place. "Was there something you wanted? I'm sure you didn't call just to hear us run our big mouths."

Max blinked, having honestly forgotten in the wake of their deluge of excitement. "Um," the young boy began cautiously, unsure of how exactly to proceed. "Well, I was just thinking that, well, Ash seemed kind of upset with us, when we left. I just wanted to make sure that, you know...he wasn't mad at me for-"

"Max, Ash is thrilled that you're starting your journey." Misty assured him, cutting the ridiculous notion off before he could finish it. "He's going to be pulling for you the whole way, just like you would be for him." Misty said with some certainty. "He's just a little beat up about Sinnoh, still, and it's making him act a little funny. By the time you see him again, everything will be back to normal, I promise. I think today really brought him around."

She could see the look of honest relief wash across Max's boyish face, as he nodded his acceptance.

"Um, actually," Brock piped up hesitantly, "speaking of acting funny..."

Misty only regarded the screen of Ash's gear with a questioning look.

The breeder scratched the side of his head. "I guess Ash gave up on being nice to you, from the sounds of things."

When she only continued to stare into the camera, dumbfounded, he clarified what he meant exactly. "When Ash pulled me aside on the stairs, when we showed up this afternoon, he was asking me how I thought he should go about dumping your bike into the pool." Brock admitted, as though by doing so, he was placing his own head onto the chopping block.

Now she was even more confused. "But, he just gave me my bike back. And he didn't even want to trade Pokemon back. Come to think of it, he hasn't even really been all that annoying today. Well, until about an hour ago, at least."

"Well, I told him that things would go a lot easier on him, if he was just nice about it and let the whole thing go." Brock explained, the realization that he was putting his foot in it growing ever more . "I think he took that to mean that he should be as painfully nice to you as possible."

Misty's face instantly transformed from a confused frown, to an irritated grimace. "Oh, I see."

Brock, likewise frowned, knowing from that look alone, that he'd inadvertently given the redhead just cause to beat Ash senseless. Misty couldn't be too mad, though, really. She wasn't about to let Ash or Brock know that, but she had suspected something of a similar nature all day. She would get payback later. Let them sweat it out, until she decided she was good and ready to, though. "Well, we'll see about that, I suppose," she replied ambiguously.

She pretended not to notice Brock's unnerved look as they shared goodbyes with each other, and she promised to carry them on likewise to Ash. Still, though, when they hung up the phone, that was one thing, Brock realized, that Ash would never outgrow, even if he tried. Even with so much time apart, those two were still so much the same, when it came to each other.

"Are you guys coming, or what?" Dawn huffed, having realized much to her dismay, that she'd been walking along for almost five minutes now, without either of her partners following her. She was none too pleased at having to backtrack and find them standing along the side of the road. "Jhoto is a long way from here, you know that right?" She gave a sidelong throw of her arm, as if to suggest how truly long their journey would be.

Without letting them say much of anything on the matter, she turned sharply, and led them on again. Brock fell in line behind her, without complaint, since he knew that any forthcoming would be pointless and so did Max, though Brock did notice that the troubled expression had returned to his face.

Brock nudged him, once he felt that Dawn was far enough ahead that she would not overhear. "You're not still worried about Ash, are you?"

Max looked back and shook his head. He didn't offer an explanation, but in following the young trainer's line of sight, Brock could see that his uncertainty was more focused towards Dawn, than anything they'd left behind in Cerulean City. Seeming to realize that Brock could see who he was looking at, he murmured, more to himself than anything, the beginnings of an explanation. "May told me that Dawn was a coordinator like her, but I had no idea she would be so..."

"Animated?" Brock offered, finishing the sentence for him.

Max didn't visibly change his expression at the suggestion, even though that was way off the mark. What he was thinking, was less substantial than that, and had more to do with the color of her hair, and the glint of her eyes, the way her skirt moved from side to side when she walked, and how she sounded, just now, when she was mad. Still, he didn't correct Brock's assertion, since the word 'pretty' seemed so much more embarrassing. "Yeah," he lied.

Brock gave him a slap on the back, and chuckled. "You'll get used to it."

Max wondered if he would.

* * *

Lance stepped out of his the limousine, pausing for a moment to take off one sandal and slap it gently against his leg, clearing it of some lingering sand, before putting it back on He held a pokegear tucked between his cheek and shoulder, as he worked his way out of the door, and stood to his full height.

"Suspicious characters, huh?" a deep, gravely voice said over the other end of the phone-line.

"No," he commented dryly. "Nothing suspicious, really. Poor taste in fashion, maybe." Though, when Lance thought of Silver's brown trench-coat, patterned with flames, he realized that this comment may have missed it's intended mark.

"So what makes you think they're involved?" Silver asked, clearly annoyed.

The champion didn't bother trying to explain it, there was nothing really to make him suspect the two individuals he had seen quietly working their way back down around the cape, once the threat of the Gyarados had subsided. Nothing concrete. Nothing tangible, at least. Just a detective's intuition. He'd actually been following them for almost a week now, and even though he hadn't actually seen them up to no good, the circumstances just kept piling up.

"And how are you gonna pin em down, even if they are?" The man on the other end snarled in frustration, realized that the dragon-trainer was hardly going to be forthcoming with an answer to his previous question. Silver had been a member of the Pokemon G-Men for a long, _long_time and if he'd learned nothing else, he'd learned that when Lance flew by the seat of his pants, it usually meant that there would be a lot of loose ends, and more than appropriate share of hang-ups involved on the way to a successful operation. Unless Lance was wrong, which as far as Silver was ware, he never had been.

"Let me worry about it." Lance said, as he strode casually onto the wharf, eyes sharply scanning for the boat-rental kiosk. He didn't intend to do anything immediately, of course. At least, nothing drastic. He was the head of the Pokemon Leagues investigation team, but he did have other responsibilities to fulfill. This matter could be followed up on at any point, though, and only required a small measure of

Silver snorted. "Then why the hell did you call_ me_?" Lance realized that Silver's bluster was simply that. The man was gruff and abrasive with everyone ostensibly. Being a large, burly man, it wasn't until you really got to know Silver, that you realized what a big softy he actually was, in spite of such appearances. Still, he realized that he was going to have to give Silver something a little more concrete than a stab in the dark.

"I just want you to keep an ear to the ground." Lance said quietly. "If these guys are involved and it does link back to the events in Viridian City, then you can bet that it won't be easy to flush them out, once they realize I'm onto them. I need someone with eyes out in the open, on this, if we're gonna link this back to Giovanni."

Silver groaned. Nobody had heard a peep from the former head of Silph Co, and suspected leader of Team Rocket for almost two years. Still, if he was ever going to turn up, it would definitely be in response to this Viridian City debacle. "Fine, fine. I'll keep listening through all the usual channels. Once you make your move, If I hear any coincidental chatter, you'll know first."

Lance was pleased with that and moved to the counter, rapping at the bell with a smile. "Speaking of coincidental, I saw Ash today. He really helped me out with-" he changed the tone of his voice evenly, choosing to keep the details conspiratorial, as the clerk approached the desk, "that thing I was telling you about earlier."

"Gyarados? Of course he did. I mean, he is-" Lance realized that it was quite rude to be on the phone at a service counter, and that that sort of behavior was simply not befitting of a champion. Without another though, he clapped the gear shut, and replaced it in his pocket. He'd told Silver everything he needed to anyways.

"How can I help you?" the clerk asked, clearly recognizing the reigning Kanto champion, and beaming wide.

"Yes, I was wondering, could I see the ledger for all of today's rentals?" Lance asked, as polite as could be.

"Well, actually, Mr. Lance-"

"Just Lance, please." Adjusting his sunglasses slightly, the Champion widened his smile accommodatingly.

"Well, Lance, those records are actually confidential. We promise not to share the personal information of our customers with any third party as part of the renters agreement," the clerk admitted, obviously not too happy at having to turn down such a celebrity.

Lance was good at thinking on his feet. He knew that if he could not get his hands on that ledger, he had no real legal authority to seize them, without cooperating with the local police force. He didn't have timed to get involved on that level, and by the time he _did_ have that sort of spare time, these characters would already been too far ahead of him. "It's just that, you see, I'm here on behalf of the Cerulean City Gymnasium, on account of their recent event on the cape."

"Some sort of trouble?" the clerk asked, curiously.

"No, not at all. The opposite, in fact. As a League Representative, I must say that the event was a credit to the city, and to Misty's Gym," Lance offered, with all due sincerity. "I'd like to, if I may, have a copy of those ledgers, so that the League can compensate anyone who rented a boat to better view and participate in the event. As a courtesy, you understand."

The clerk seemed to mull the idea over, evidently quite proud that the local attraction had stirred the interest of a high-profile, but still having some misgivings.

"Please," Lance added, offering a gesture of appeal.

"...Alright, Champ. You got it," the clerk conceded, with a grin.

Lance, never one to tip his hand, only nodded and smiled. "Fantastic."

* * *

Misty stepped out of her office, and closed the door behind herself, with a sigh. Ash was standing by the pools edge, talking to Pikachu, about one thing or another concerning their invitation, she was sure. She thought devilishly, about how easy it would be fore her to shove him into the pool, if she snuck up behind him. She put it aside however, and kept her cool. Things were going pretty well for him now, and she, as his friend, was going to do her best not to ruin it for him.

Yet.

"Hey Misty!" she heard Ash call, from halfway across the arena, after she had only taken a few steps toward him. "We're gonna leave now, okay?"

She stopped in her tracks, and found that her mind, as well as her heart was racing wildly. Was he really just gonna bail, just like that? _Okay, bye, seeya. _For some reason, she couldn't help but think that she'd wanted her parting with Ash to be somewhat more significant. Something more than just a goodbye. She realized that she wanted it to be something more like a promise. A promise that they would see each other again, at the very least. But, logically, in this position, such as it was, she could not ask for that. She couldn't, and wouldn't beg Ash to stay nearby.

Ash's continuation of farewell surprised her, though, for that same reason. "Sure feels weird, you know? Saying goodbye to you again. I've said goodbye to Brock lots of times, but..." He seemed pensive; thoughtful. "I dunno, it's like I just..." The look became somewhat tormented, as though her were bothered by the words themselves, "I don't want to go," he finally managed, forcing the words out of his mouth. "Even though I have to."

She didn't know what to say. She was genuinely touched. Ash probably didn't realize that and it was probably just another one of his episodes where he would say something very flattering and think nothing of it, then forget about it later. But still, even if Ash didn't realize how much that was exactly what she'd wanted to hear, it still held significance, and she wouldn't read too much into it, if it meant destroying that.

She smiled. "I can't come with you, either, unfortunately," Misty stated, with a slightly forlorn quality to her voice, though she meant every word resolutely. She couldn't leave. She had a responsibility to the Gym, to her sisters, and those responsibilities were only going to intensify as things went on. She loved it here, and no matter how much she missed being on the road, _this _was her place, and her calling. She was going to be a Water Pokemon Master some day, and by Arceus, within the year she was going to make this the strongest Gym in all of Kanto.

Ash nodded, and showed her his own smile. He wouldn't have asked her to.

Raising his hand,and displaying his palm open, both he, and Pikachu beside him, waved. "I guess this is goodbye then."

Misty felt a frown tug at her features. This just didn't seem fair. Before she could halt it, before she could deny those impulses that put the thought in her head, her crush on Ash, once again, forced the meek works out of her mouth. "Everybody else got a hug? Don't I?"

Ash blinked. He was more than a little taken aback, but he stepped forward slowly, anyways. "I-I guess."

Misty felt a mischievous thought come to her, amid the pounding in her chest as she thought over what she'd asked for, and Ash nervously made his approach. _Sure,_ she thought, _why not now?_

The moment Ash paused before her, his hands awkwardly seeking a convergence point behind the back of the girl he'd clearly never considered offering such a gesture to, she cross-stepped him, and hooked an arm hard under his shoulder. With a jerk, she pulled him inward against her hip, and flipped him into the water with an enormous splash. Before the roar of water had even left his ears, he could already hear the laughter of Misty and Pikachu.

"That's for trying to play me, Ash," she explained, as soon as she could calm her laughter enough to offer a stern expression, making obvious reference to his earlier, phony behavior. "The next time you say something nice to me, you'd better mean it."

Ash tried to offer some protest to that, explain that not everything he'd said was fabrication, but he could scarcely manage to do that, and keep his head above water at the same time. His heavy clothes weighed a ton, saturated with water. If an explaination was needed, however, it seemed a moot point when Misty cracked a smile at him.

"I'm gonna miss you, Ash."

With that, she leapt into the pool, shoes and all. She knew that there was no way that Ash would be able to pull himself out of the water on his own, and if she tried to help him from the edge, he would only try to drag her in as some measure of compensation. This way, she figured, she could avoid the inevitable.

Still, she was surprised at how quickly he grabbed for her, looping his arms around her neck and propping his chin on her shoulder, in their close embrace. It was more Ash's desperate attempt to keep his head above the water than it was a hug, but even so...it did make her feel pretty good.

* * *

A/N: Okay, so I couldn't resist sweetening the deal with a little more Max, along with Marc and Penny! Wow, who knew? (Me)

Anyways, the next chapter, I hope, will be here before the fall. I've got some high hopes for it, since it's going to take the fic in a new direction, down the next leg of the story. Look forward to it. I appreciate all the reviews, as always!


	12. Chapter XII

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon or Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket

Chapter Summary: Trying times for Ash Ketchum have been overcome, at long last, or so he thinks. Team Nebula hasn't yet had their last word on the matter. How will Doc get along without Holiday's constant nagging? Furthermore, how will Holiday and his big mouth survive without Doc to back him up?

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XII**

"Not Quite As Planned"

Today was the day his ferry departed. Three days into Vermillion from Cerulean, and two more by boat to Mandarin Island. Ash really couldn't have been more eager. He was out on the wharf, staring out into the bay of Vermillion, thinking of his journey to participate in the Elite Four training camp. There was only one slight problem...

His boat had left an _hour_ ago.

He looked down at his gear again, certain that he'd set his alarm for nine AM. He'd double-checked. Triple-checked, even. That should have left him with more than enough time to get up, shower, leave the Pokemon center and make it all the way here, with an hour left to spare. Instead, his alarm was set for nine PM, and he was sitting here, like a chump.

The forlorn trainer looked down at the black invitation card in his hands. This was supposed to have been his saving grace, right here. This invitation was supposed to have been his springboard. His last chance.

He swelled and boiled underneath his deflated exterior, though. Within a few minutes of staring blankly out into the bay at the smoke-trail of a fast-retreating vessel, he thought might've been his own, Ash finally lost control. Crushing the black card in his gloves, he hurled the balled invitation out into the water, shouting a word that he was certain his mother would never have allowed him to use in her house. Of course the wind caught it, and slapped it back into his face, which only raise his ire further. He gathered the card back up into his grip and prepared to hurl it again defiantly, when someone nearby laughed.

Ash turned to regard the person venomously, nearly dumping Pikachu, who had struggled to hold on thus far, into the drink. He remembered two weeks ago having found his courage lacking where in it was required to show this particular person the length of his ire, but no more. His anger was so complete at this point, that neither the width of Docs shoulders or the height of his stance, both a considerable deal greater than his own, slowed his pace as he stomped toward the Admin.

Doc, who was leaning easily against the railing, only widened his smirk, even when Ash so brazenly extended his index finger and prodded it sharply into his chest.

"What in the hell is so funny?" Ash roared, grinding the gloved fingertip into his mocking adversary's athletic shirt.

Doc reigned in his smirk a little bit, and then frowned as he slapped the offending hand aside sharply, though it came with little effort. He stood straight, just to let the young trainer how much trouble he would be in, if he decided to keep pressing his luck. Ash, who seemed to get the picture stepped away, though his snarling visage did not change in the least.

The Nebula glanced over towards the Pikachu on Ash's shoulder, who's expression seemed to be a mixture of empathetic agitation for his master's own anger and confusion, as though the Pokemon couldn't understand why or at what it's trainer was so angry. Of course, that revelation only made his smile wider. The Repel was still working.

He thought back on his last meeting with Holiday.

The taller, more boisterous Admin had left yesterday afternoon, bound for Orre, on yet another airplane that Doc was glad he was not taking.

"You'll be fine." Holiday had assured him, humping the carry-on bag over his shoulder with a disapproving snort for his partners hesitance. Reassurance never came easily from the engineer's mouth, of course, and so Doc did not take it lightly. "Just follow the kid, and keep getting in his way."

"Doesn't sound too hard," Doc said with a somewhat relieved chuckle.

"It shouldn't be," Holiday assessed. "I already hacked into his phone and fucked all his scheduling up for the next few weeks. He was supposed to head out to the archipelago and train with some big-names from the league, but I doubt he's gonna make it, now." The admin laughed. "Just follow the tracking signal, like how I showed you. Use the repel if you need to."

"Now boarding passengers in sections 1-A through 13-D. Final call for passengers boarding flight 112, non-stop to Gateon Port."

"Alright, Bro, that's me." Holiday said, and with a casual gesture, turned, and walked away.

"Hey, Holiday." Doc called after him. "What do you think I should do, yanno, once I find him?"

Holiday turned back just once, and offered him a shrug. "Just do what you do best, bro."

As Doc stood now, facing the seething, burning teenager, he crossed his arms. What he did best, what he had always done best, was rise to the challenge. And today was the day he would make good on his promise to compensate Ash for the sense of defeat he'd been left with when last they'd met on the field of competition, pitting skill against skill in the streets of Viridian. Ash had not beaten him them, not definitively at least, but the task before him had been to lose the young pursuer, not remain ahead of him, no matter how significant that lead might've been.

He'd thought for a long time on how today was going to play out. He'd imagined, in his head what it would be like, if he had simply brought Ash's Pidgeot out with him, and started a real fight, a real competition with the young trainer, provoking him to the extreme, running and battling his way through this city as well. He was confident that he could win such a competition, now. But there was more to his decision not to, than any simple orders to the contrary he might've received. His competition with Ash needed to be complete, and wholesome. Doc was not nearly so cut-throat, he believed, as his partner. If he did too much to shake Ash up beforehand, then he would know it, and it would diminish his sense of satisfaction with the win.

He could do a lot to arrange such a fight, but he could not delude himself into believing that he'd beaten an opponent on equal ground, the way that Holiday seemed to be able to. He knew that Holiday would never have gone along with this plan, and there were a lot of reasons why. Foremost, he was still relying on a little bit of give from Ash to glue everything into place. Holiday would never formulate a plan that relied on emotions like that. But, he reminded himself, Holiday wasn't here, and this was his show for the next month.

"Nothin'," Doc offered at last. "Just didn't know you were such a crybaby, is all."

Doc tried to hide his widened grin as Ash erupted into more furious hysterics. Back against the rail again, the muscular trainer reclined easily, hooking his thumbs on the inside of his pokebelt. "If it makes you feel any better, you'd have probably just gotten in their way, anyhow," he added for good measure, when Ash's rage seemed like it would wind itself down. Of course, the incensed young boy only flew into more cursing and ranting, all of which worked itself wonderfully towards Doc's ultimate design.

"You don't understand a thing about it, because you don't know me. I don't even know how you or your stupid friend keep bumping into me! What the hell do you think makes you so special? I've trained in four different regions! I've got badges and trophies from here to Hoenn! I've seen more Pokemon than most people know exists! I've battled more trainers than I can even count! Who the hell are you? You're just some weirdo who travels around pulling splinters out of Pokemon paws, and has nothing better to do than give me a hard time! Well, screw you! You don't know-"

"I'm better than you, I know that." Doc said with a shrug, as though the matter were hardly up for questioning.

"Bullshit!" Ash said immediately, slamming the back of two fingers together against his palm to provide evidence. "I saved you and that goofy-looking idiot from Golem in Mt. Moon. If you're so great, how come you couldn't do that yourself?"

Doc waved the notion away. "I could've dealt with that. I was working on it, actually until you showed up. Notice how I still had Pokemon left to use," the admin countered, providing evidence of his own, however lame it might've been. Had his Pokemon selection been a little better, he could have dealt with the problem more cleanly. He'd been forced to switch his lineup just recently before, though.

"You're a liar." Ash said dismissively. "If you had the problem under control, I'd have never gone down there."

It was Doc's turn to be skeptical. There was no way Ash could have known just how their fight with Golem was going, until he was in the chamber with them. It was pitch-black in those tunnels. When he thought about it, he realized that there was a remote possibility that the Lucario that had been with him at the time, might've known, being a Psychic Pokemon, after all, but Ash himself probably couldn't have even heard them through the collapsed wall he'd come crashing through. Which, Doc supposed, begged the question: How had Ash actually known where to find them at all?

"You're a liar." Doc said, venturing a guess. "You wouldn't have been there at all, if it weren't for that Lucario- which obviously wasn't yours." He could see from Ash's expression that he'd hit the mark. "Don't try and take credit for that."

Ash ground his teeth together sharply, so loudly that Doc, even a full five strides away, could hear it. The admin just crossed his arms.

"Just get away from me," Ash managed finally, struggling to hold it all in.

"It's a free country." Doc said, with some amusement. "I can do whatever I want."

The force of Ash's arms and legs snapping to full extension in rage, as he straightened out to full height, created a whooshing sound, like a door slamming. So what if he'd missed out on the biggest opportunity of his career. So what if he was going to regret this day for the rest of his natural life. Right now, the only thing that mattered to him was dismissing that smile from Doc's face.

"I'd crush you in a battle." Ash promised, his features deadlocked in a loathsome expression that Ash held in strict reservation for the nastiest of foes. He remembered giving a similar look to J, once. Ash didn't really understand runaway hate for what it was, and since this was the first such occasion, he wasn't really sure where to begin. The young trainer shook his head, and continued on in spite of that, too angry to stop himself. "I don't care what you know, or what you think you know; I've got way more experience and skill than my recent performance might suggest. If that's all you've got to go on, then let me make things clear for you: I'd make you look like an idiot. You'd embarrass yourself against me. I've beaten people who wouldn't wipe their own asses with someone like you. In fact, I'm so confident I could beat you at any thing that had even the most remote thing to do with Pokemon training, that I'd-"

Doc chose now to cut across his young rival. In truth, he'd meant to the moment the suggestion of competition had occurred, but something unusual had held him up for a second. He wasn't exactly sure what it was, even now, as he pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket. A small flash of color somewhere. A blue light, perhaps a reflection in the young trainers eyes, maybe. Whatever it was, it was gone now. "You're on. Hope you've got plenty of spare time ahead of you.

"Oh, wait..." Doc chided, "You do!"

He held out the piece of paper, and plopped into into the clawed up hand that rose to accept it grudgingly. "Meet me at this address, before sundown. "

"You just made a big mistake." Ash promised him, closing his gloved fingers tightly around the paper, and clenching his eyes shut, as if containing some raw energy within that would escape through any outlet if if he gave it a chance.

Doc laughed at him as he walked away. Soon, Ash was alone again on the wharf, listening to the sound of crashing waves and his own grinding teeth. Pikachu cooed quietly at him, having perceived the entire thing as a near-psychotic episode from his partner, being unable to perceive the person whom Ash had been threatening. Ash didn't hear the concerns, though, too lost in his own cyclonic anger over the whole episode.

He would go to wherever this idiot had called him out to, humiliate him, and if the muscle-headed oaf was lucky, he would walk away before he did anything drastic.

* * *

Holiday, meanwhile, was having his own problems. Nebula grunts, under the guise of privatized Cipher security had collected him immediately from the airport. Two particularly large individuals in black suits seized his pokebelt, hooked his arms and escorted him not-so-neatly into the back of a black sedan, and took up seats on either side of him.

Not usually so fond of such attention, Holiday tried to take as much of it in stride as possible. Putting his feet up on the console and kicking a black-suited elbow out of his way in the process, surprising himself at how little room was actually available in a fully loaded car. The admin cracked a smile. "Damn, ain't this cozy? Couldn't 'a sprung for something a little more spacious? I just got off a thirteen hour flight, here."

Nobody gave him a response, which somehow, he thought he liked less than the expected snarl and batting away of his foot. He just made a face, though. The ride was considerably better than the cramped air-liner, at the very least.

He played on his Xtranciever to shorten the ride. After nearly an hour of leafing through the downloaded titles on his Virtual Console, he chose an old one that caught his fancy. Soon he was jabbering away, quite ignorant of the scornful stares coming in from all around him.

"Pikachu," He said, into the device's microphone, trying to catch the attention of the on-screen Pokemon. There was no response. With a harrumph he tried again. "Pikachu!" For some reason, this worked, though he could've sworn that his diction and tone was identical.

"No, not Acorn. Onion!" He needed to make that soup. The soup required onions. Not fucking Acorns.

"Making that shitty little face isn't going to change my mind," he countered, as Pikachu scowled at him for his decision. Pikachu was fond of Acorns apparently. "Pick up the damn Onion." He smiled widely as Pikachu scampered over, and carried out his command.

Unfortunately, he ran out of time and Bulbasaur's stew ended up tasting like shit anyways, because as Holiday suspected, neither Bulbasaur nor Pikachu knew the first thing about making soup. Really, it seemed like a foolish assumption to have made in the first place. Feeling like scolding them all for being so stupid, he selected his worlds carefully, and spoke them as clearly into the microphone as he could, when offered the chance to comment on their attempt. "You're all Faggots."

Soon it was the end of the day, and he said "Goodbye." But apparently, Pikachu was either still pissed at him over how miserable the soup had turned out, or was just clingy. With a forlorn expression, the Pokemon stalked away, before realizing that Holiday wasn't going to offer any further words of farewell. With an angry look, it scampered through the hedge. "Don't go away mad, fag. Just go away."

As the screen faded to black, he shrugged. "You'll be back. They always come back."

When the driver cleared his throat, Holiday looked up. Holding the wrist-bound item up for inspection in the rear-view mirror, he pointed at it, to indicate the tiny yellow Pokemon pawing at his patio door, desperate to be let inside for more abuse. "See? Toldja."

"Get out." the not so friendly driver commanded. Holiday glanced over to see that they had at last arrived.

With a sigh, he allowed five or so contemptuous seconds to pass without action; his own silent voice of protest. Then he clapped his Xtranciever closed and began the laborious process of extricating himself from the middle seat. When at last he stood on the outside of the sedan, he and his four man escort found themselves in the Realgam Tower plaza, standing in the shadow of the single largest structure in the world. Most men would have felt humbled in the sight of the nearly four-thousand foot structure. Most men, certainly, but Holiday wasn't like most men.

Furthermore, he'd been responsible for most of the base-line research that went into the grav-lev system that kept the colossal structure upright. He wasn't going to claim that he had been chief engineer for the project or anything, but most of his own undergraduate study had contributed to that repulsion system. In fact, most of the systems for which Cipher holdings had been claimed were, in part at least, his work, if truth were to be told- which Holiday would go to great lengths to see that it wasn't.

Instead of looking upward, Holiday stuck both of his gloved hands into his pockets and then nodded out ahead, as though now he were becoming impatient. "Mosey on."

He let them take up rigid position on either side of him, two by two as they entered the massive tower through the glass and steel presidium, flashing electronic ID badges wherever pertinent.

He stepped into the elevator head of them, taking a eyeful of the distant canyon through the shaft, the outer portion of which was comprised by a glass tube on the exterior of the tower itself. As expected, the four immense suits pressed in behind him, coming to rest easily in each of the elevators non-cardinal directions, as silent as they had been this whole trip.

As he heard the ding of the elevator door behind him, he pointed vapidly into the distance. "Hey guys." he asked, his smirk ever-building, "Is that a UFO?"

Holiday was a little surprised that they all turned to look, since it would've been better if they'd have all kept themselves preoccupied honestly, but he tried not to let that stop him. Turning to eyeball the closing doors, he coiled his legs beneath him in preparation for a flying leap. Using a move Doc hadn't so much taught him, as performed in front of him enough for him to critically observe, then make fun of, Holiday narrowed his profile by turning every appendage sidelong, and hopping sideways through the narrow opening of the elevator door.

He landed on his face on the floor outside. With a snarl, he glanced back toward the door, thinking that perhaps he should've adjusted the timing to compensate for any extra gut he might've packed on since they'd started his assignment. Instead, he saw his shoe caught in the jamb. He retracted it, narrowly, and let the doors slide shut, before the automatic safety mechanism brought them sliding back open.

Unfortunately this did little to stop the probing fingers of his escort as they narrowly caught the sealing portal, and tried to force it back open, though, If his fall had been something born of clumsiness, his following sprint must've seemed Olympiad in nature, by comparison.

Doc's track coach had once said that Holiday was the antithesis of an athlete: Lazy, out of shape, and ill-built. But when the team's Houndour mascot had broken lose from it's Poke ball and given chase to the ever-casual, trudging Holiday, when he'd come to meet up with Doc after school, the speed at which the lanky young man had taken off to scale the bleachers three at a time, tripping and fumbling every step and still making amazing time, left the entire team in such state of bafflement, that the coach had been all but required to open a spot on the team- which Holiday had flatly declined, surprising no one.

Holiday remembered the nickname "Crazy Legs" going around campus for a while, but "Coward Legs" was probably more like it.

The way he weaved and thrashed through the grasping limbs and clawing hands was anything but elegant, but once he was in the clear, there wasn't a force in the world that was going to slow him down. He barreled down a side-hall, crashing into an OL, putting her out on her back and treading over her like uneven ground. He was vaguely aware that the briefcase she'd thrown into the air had landed on his back when he careened to the side, and had to double-up his footwork, and slap one hand to the granite floor to keep himself upright.

His sneakers still bit the floor at turbo-speed though, and even with all their size and muscle and determination, the four grunts, with their three-pieces and oxfords could hardly keep pace. It seemed like Holiday should be spitting up foundation in his wake, as he crashed through the double-doors to the stairwell.

That, they looked upon with renewed hope though, for Holiday's notable, awkward gait, sloppy demeanor and expanding paunch made it obvious that he was ill-equipped to keep this up for long In a seven-thousand six-hundred and seventy four step test of endurance up two hundred and eighty flights of stairs, the out-of shape administrator was bound to lose, after all.

When they made it into the stairwell they could hear his sneakers slapping and squeaking against the floor, already two levels above them. A long series of rapid staccato bounces, and then two long strides as he made the landing.

Holiday too began to realize the error of his course, as the adrenaline of the moment receded. Gradually the stairs began to feel steep, and the landings felt impossibly brief. He chanced a glance over the railing, and spotted his pursuers three floors below him, looking up at him over the banister in kind. He glanced up, and it was like staring into infinity. It felt like he'd already run a mile, and he hadn't even made a dent in the distance remaining. Realgam stretched out forever, overhead, truly humbling him.

"Fuck this." Holiday proclaimed, taking up a brisk pace again with a huff, but working around in the sleeve of his jacket for a poke ball. He threw out the one remaining ball, which he always kept tucked away near his shoulder, for just such reasons. He rued that it contained his Rattata, but for now, it would do. Without explaining- for he was far too busy keeping from tripping himself, as he tucked one leg up and pulled off the shoe mid-stride, then did the same thing with the other, tying the laces together.

After hurling them out in front of himself, onto the landing above, he pointed. "Take those upstairs!" his Rattata gave him a troublesome look that distinctly reminded him of the precocious digital Pokemon on his Xtranciever, but he would brook no argument. He continued to point, "What, you think you're a Pikachu or something? That you can just get all sassy with me, because you're adorable? Well I got news for you: you ain't cute! So get to steppin', before I punt you over the rail you ugly little-"

The last part of his insult was cut short as he heard four sets of oxfords hit the landing below, and Holiday, possessed by the same fear-induced power-surge slipped back toward the access doors, and neatly navigated his way to the other side of them, pushing the hydraulic door-stop closed neatly and silently behind himself.

He could hear the four clamber up the steps just outside, and then turn, unerringly to follow the steady clop-clop of Rattata dragging his shoes up the stairs a level above them. His smile could not have encompassed more of his face. He let out a long, quiet gust of wind, as he turned about.

There was a meeting going on behind him, and now all eyes at the elliptical table were turned to face him, staring quizzically at the man who was entirely out of place in their button-down, professional environment with his vintage haircut, scorching pink jacket, and shoeless feet. He made a face at them, and for the most part, they went back to what they were doing. He did belong here, after all, though he mostly worked in the upper levels, and in the sub-basement. People certainly recognized him, and knew that his antics didn't have to make sense.

Tucking both hands into his pockets, he trudged to the end of the room, and opened the door to leave.

The gray-suited finance officer at the head of the desk cleared his throat awkwardly. "Er, so, as I was saying; domestic sales are back up this quarter, and foreign holdings continue to report up-trends numbering-"

Holiday slammed the door shut, without explanation, and moved to the next one.

"Numbering in the upper eights. We've also got a major lease ending before the fiscal year, and-"

Again, perplexedly, Holiday moved to the next door, the last of the three exits to the room, and threw it open.

"Fuck!" the admin snarled.

A junior accountant spoke up first. "Is there something I can help you with?" the younger man asked impatiently.

Holiday glared. "Where's the fucking elevator?"

"Past the first row of cubicles, then down the hall to your left." all of the rooms' occupants said in chorus, as though he should've known.

Holiday rolled his eyes. Management. He took his leave after giving the middle finger to anyone who was still paying him any attention. "Thanks a million."

He made his way down the hall and to the elevator door, where he paused a moment, feeling quite strange without his shoes on, but somewhat distracted by his current dilemma. He wasn't exactly sure what the meaning of being dragged up to see the Boss was all about. Obviously, their performance in Kanto had been less than awe-inspiring thus far, and he was well-aware that Kazuo had other feelers in place besides himself to gauge what progress was being made toward their goals with Ash Ketchum, even if he'd continued to report half-truths and omissions. But for some reason, this whole scenario gave off a little more than that. He could take the elevator down, leave Realgam all-together, and force this meeting to take place on his own terms, which he was far more inclined to do, given what he'd suffered so far, or...

He tapped the 'up' arrow button, and smiled.

...he could go up to Kazuo's office and score a little unexpected mono-a-mono grill-time before those base-level stooges caught on. He'd never been one for subtlety, and he saw no reason to start now. The elevator ride was brisk, and not nearly as long as one might've expected from Realgam's immense height. When he found himself outside the double doors, he didn't waste a moment thinking about what he was going to ask, or what excuse he was going to give for arriving without the escort that had so obviously been meant to cow him.

When he pushed them open, he was ripped off his feet instantly, by his outstretched arm, and deposited so harshly on his back that the wind blasted from his lungs. Ten long, hard fingers clasped his neck and dragged him fiercely, inexorably across the floor. With no breath to cry out with, and no ability to bring in more, Holiday found that he scarcely had the wherewithal to resist as two powerful arms vaulted him up, and onto the large ebony desk cracking the dynamic viewing surface with his rag-doll form.

They'd caught up a little faster than he'd imagined they would, Holiday thought, tasting coppery blood in his mouth. He opened his eyes, fully expecting to see the burly grunts standing over him, perhaps one carrying his shoes and his Rattata in each meaty hand.

But it was just Kazuo.

Five-foot-five, skinny as a rail Kazuo, still in his pinstripe suit and silk tie, nearly half a foot shorter than him and almost fifty pounds lighter, had him sprawled out on the table, and had made significant headway towards choking the life out of him. Clumsily, Holiday grabbed for the offending arms. What he was seeing had a very surreal feeling to it after all, and since it all hardly seemed possible; a dreamlike state seemed to wash over him momentarily. His darkening tunnel-vision perspective did little to diminish the snarling visage in his face, and the curious bluish light that seemed to flicker just outside of his close-cropped periphery.

Those arms did not yield to the halfhearted protest, though, and Holiday could hear the tendons creak in his neck, even over the gurgling sound he was making. Eventually, his confused pawing became desperate thrashing, and his legs kicked out desperately to create separation, to little avail.

Somewhat detached, Holiday's whirring consciousness tried to construct a scenario in which this all made sense, but he couldn't. It was just to confusing and suddenly, all too real- all too late. He remembered seeing himself put a gloved palm against Kazuo's chin, in a pathetic effort to push the ferocious man away, then nothing but an ominous blackness, as his eyes rolled back into their sockets.

Far, far away, the Admin registered a sound at the distant end of the room, and though he lapsed into unconsciousness before he realized what it was, it was likely the only thing that saved his life. The four men burst into the room, one laden with Holiday's sneakers and Pokemon, and after a moment of stunned hesitance, flew to their boss in an effort to aid him. As they came rushing up beside him though, they quickly realized the seemingly craven executive hardly needed their assistance and had apparently dealt with his would be attacker with lethal force, from the growing purple bruises around the pink-jacketed Admin's collar.

Their stunned gawking did not amuse Kazuo, who relinquished his hold over Holiday once it became obvious that the wiry administrator would not be getting back up, and threw a grasping hand towards the foremost grunt. The huge man hardly would've had the presence of mind to flinch away from such a blindingly fast motion, even with the realization that Kazuo was capable of such brutality. It wasn't an aggressive strike though; Kazuo simply withdrew the mans concealed firearm from his jacket, held it complacently at his side.

"Uh, boss?" the confused grunt began, still not certain of what was going on. As far as any of them had been told, all the boss had wanted was for Holiday to see him immediately. The connotations had seemed more along the lines of a business write-up, than this, which already reeked suspiciously of murder. Still, he hoped that the CEO would give him an easy out, as opposed to an explanation. They'd busted in here to bring news of Holiday's escape and suddenly, he and all three of his men wanted nothing more than to be out of here and forget they'd ever met the Admin today.

"You should leave." Kazuo said, hardly paying them any mind as he returned his gaze to the sprawled out administrator.

Nobody disagreed with him.

* * *

Ash roared into the air, all of his anger, and disappointment gushing forth like dragon's fire. He'd missed what was probably going to turn out to be the biggest opportunity of his training career; an honor that came to only a select few outside of the elite four, and a personal invitation from the Champion himself! He just couldn't believe it! How could one person possibly have such miserable luck? He wanted to punch himself in the face. He wanted to crawl into a hole and die -but first, he wanted to utterly destroy Doc.

That slime-ball had the nerve to confront him. The nerve to say that he was better. Judging by the caliber of company that the muscular man kept, Ash could readily assume that Doc's likely estimation of superiority would amount to little more than a momentary distraction, before Ash got on his way.

He sneered into the empty air. Lousy bum. Him and his dumb Pokemon were in for a nasty surprise. He would consummately destroy Doc. He was too caught up to notice it, but a tidal-wave of repressed anger was surging out of him, now. All the discontentment and sorrow he felt at the loss in the Sinnoh League, all of the misplaced, and ultimately unreconciled jealousy and hurt he'd felt towards Brock and Dawn and Max, and all of the muddied, confused insult and offense he'd taken at the hands of Misty, and Gary his two eternal rivals; it all came bubbling back up, not as phantom manifestations of those same feelings, but as something more gruesome and sinister.

The defeat he'd taken at Pokemon Tech- how much like a punch in the gut that had been! -and all the tiny, pin-prick slights and unintentional insults he'd suffered, weathered, and ignored since he'd gotten back. Every small measure of anger and dissatisfaction he'd been forced to swallow- and to him it felt like a lot- was coming out now, whether he liked it or not, in the face of this final straw. He'd missed out on the biggest opportunity of his career and of his life, because of a stupid mistake, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to change it, and nobody to blame but himself.

It didn't exactly leave Ash with a lot of choices. Not any healthy ones, at least. He could either cry in misery and self-loathing- something he was already on the verge of doing, it seemed like, from the watery contents of his eyelashes- or he could do what he planned to: redirect all of that anger at someone who was, by all accounts, as well as his own confession, one-hundred percent deserving of it. Bottled up anger was not a resource Ash often put to use, and he imagined, that was chiefly because he'd never had much of it to begin with. But right now, he was confident, these last few weeks comprised easily the worst period of his life, and even if he had to turn that fact back around on itself and use it as ammunition, he was going to blast his way out of this, though whatever was unfortunate enough to find itself in his way.

He'd had enough. He'd been so understanding of late. So optimistic, even complacent, when all he'd wanted to do from the beginning was thrash and rage and scream. Scream at how unfair it was. How unfair it _all_ was! For weeks now, he'd smiled, when he'd wanted to grimace. He'd nodded when he wanted to shake his head no, and let how he'd _really_ felt go unnoticed beneath the stoic facade he'd tacked on at Gary's suggestion. Because he was a "solo trainer" now. Because he had to be "self-reliant", and "mature", and "sensible" about everything.

Well, screw that, he thought. This situation was hardly sensible, so why the hell should _he_ be! Gary was just a pampered snob who thought he knew everything, but that the hell did he really know? Gary Oak was a wash-up! A phony! Gary stuck with Pokemon Training about as long as it took for him to realize that he was never going to be any good at it, and then gave it all up! As Ash stomped towards the double-doored portal to the address he'd been directed to, he decided that Gary, the instigator in all of this, would be the next destination on his list, once he got this round-trip ass-kicking excursion off to a start by wiping Doc off the map.

He was too furious to give much thought to why the location itself was in the middle of an outdoor commercial strip, or why there were dark green and navy blue posters in the windows. All that mattered to him, as he furiously shoved open the doors, and stomped inside, much to the surprise of every clip-board-laden occupant therein, was that Doc, who sat casually in a folding chair near the counter, was there to meet him.

Ash snorted derisively. "So are you just going to sit there, or are we going to do this?" Doc didn't respond at first, only smiled starkly, as he stood, and forked over a secondary clipboard, which the young trainer took with a confused frown.

"I already filled yours out." Doc commented, writing a long, looping, and illegible signature on the yellow sheet clipped to his own board. "All you gotta do is sign on the dotted line, and our little competition begins."

Ash looked up with a snarl. He wanted nothing more than to pulverize Doc in every capacity that he was able. Any way he could expedite that, was fine with him. He took the offered pen, and scribbled hard onto the bottom of the sheet, even as Pikachu tugged with some concern on his lapel.

Pikachu had quietly let Ash have his snarling rage-dump on the way here, and though now what was actually happening was a bit beyond his comprehension, and though he still couldn't see Doc through the haze of chemical-camouflage, he did understand that there was something unusual going on here. Ash didn't listen though, still mad. Maybe if he had, he'd have noticed the words "Pokemon Corps. Recruitment Office" written down the side of the pen he was holding.

With a smile, Doc took his clip-board and then passed both it and his own over the counter, and to the man behind it, whom Ash only now realized was in military uniform.

"Right this way," the man instructed, gesturing to a door at his side, which Doc ushered him through with a curled arm across his shoulders. There was a man with a set of hair-clippers waiting for them on the other side.

Ash's look of alarm did little to curb Doc's suddenly much more sinister grin. Screw what Holiday would've thought; this plan was gonna work!

* * *

Misty flicked her pinky from her ear, dismissing the water pooled therein. She'd been trying to rally her Pokemon together for a training exercise, which of course comprised chiefly of getting Gyarados and Kingler to slow up the pace a little, while she coerced the often lazy, if not completely disinterested Marill to join in. It was a constant contest of willpower to keep everyone's head in the same place.

Starmie and Staryu were easy enough to deal with, as they would do pretty much whatever asked of them, whenever, and however. They were docile, and well mannered. Unlike some of her younger Pokemon, who seemed to severely lack discipline. Already, Horsea and Marill were back to their three-way Water Gun match with Corsola, behind her back, as she floated in the pool, looking at Lily. On the flip side of the coin, you had Kingler, who never wanted to do anything but train tirelessly, and Gyarados who refused to be outdone by anyone, and often had to be reigned in to keep them from discouraging or out and out exhausting her other Pokemon It was so hard to find a good balance.

If only she could find a way to motivate the less experienced Pokemon, and at the same time, drive everyone with the same level of pacing and dedication...

"Are you even listening?" Lily snapped suddenly, knifing into her thoughts. "This is like, the fourth time I've repeated myself."

"Um." Misty murmured to herself, trying hard to look past the matter at hand. Eventually, though, she was just forced to shake her head no. "Sorry, what?"

Lily rolled her eyes, and scoffed. "Gary Oak is here to see you."

Misty reared back in open consideration of that for a few moments. She'd expected Tracey, honestly, if anyone from the Oak Reservation was going to come see her, at all. "Gary?"

"Yes. Gary. Gary Oak. You know, the cute one with the swoop haircut-"

"I know who he is." Misty said with a roll of her eyes. Leave it to Lily to turn up the creep-factor again, by paying way too much attention to boys her age. She shook her head disdainfully. "Where is he?"

"In the Aquarium Foyer. Looking over the new construction." Lily said, dismissing herself with that, and leaving the way she'd entered, probably to get back to whatever her and her older sisters were up to.

"Alright!" Misty called out, even though it seemed rather pointless. "Take five!" This would only essentially mean that her Pokemon were free to continue what they had been doing, only now they were free to do it without Misty complaining or trying to redirect their efforts in one way or another. Marill, Horsea, and Corsola kept squirting water at each other oblivious to the fact that she'd even been there, Kingler and Gyarados stopped cutting laps tirelessly around the pool, and went over toward where Politoed and Goldeen were meandering about at the shallow end of the pool, of the pool, not to relax of course, just to flaunt a bit before getting back to it, while Starmie and Staryu, the only two who really seemed to have been engaged with her, being foremost obedient to a fault, simply froze in place.

She lifted herself out of the water with a heave, and put both her bare feet onto the tile, waiting for the excess moisture to drip away, before she committed herself to toweling off. She was wearing her favorite swimsuit today, an all-white one-piece affair that she liked for no other reason than that her sisters abjectly despised it. As she patted the moisture from herself, and gathered her belongings, throwing her blue jacket over her shoulders, and snapping her pokegear and keys into either pocket, she marched slowly toward the gymnasium doors. She wondered why Gary was here, precisely. Maybe something had come up.

She shook her head as she went past her office, and decided to cut through it, instead, and take a more round about path to the Aquarium exhibit. She supposed that with things going the way they had been recently, she was just looking for meaning where there really wasn't any. Even if something had come up for Tracey, and that was why Gary was here, it didn't mean there was any cause for alarm or anything.

She blew out a sigh when she thought about it. She was still suffering from the aftershocks of Ash's return to Kanto. Almost every day since he'd been back, she'd heard something new concerning the young trainer that either made her furious, shook her nerves, or out and out worried her. Somehow, she'd been subconsciously waiting to hear news that Ash had caused some sort of disaster, or had befallen one, since he'd left Cerulean City to go train with the Elite Four- something she could still scarcely believe! -and every little irregularity somehow seemed to point to that. It had been quiet of late, in spite of the bustle. Too quiet.

Misty screwed up her face, as she popped through the door, and into the privacy of the Leader's Office.

"What am I, his Mom?" she snarled aloud, as she batted away the set of fingerless biking gloves that say on her desk, refusing to believe that they had crept into her regular wardrobe, and denying her impulse to put them on. "Stupid kid can take care of himself." she said, almost mantra-like, for this was not the first time she'd repeated those words.

Abstaining from the fingerless gloves probably would've seemed a moot point in regards to the next item she went for: Ash's League Expo cap, which she put over her damp hair, and turned to the side so that her pony-tail poked through. "He could at least call once in a while."

She frowned at herself in the mirror as she rested her glove-less palm on the doorknob into the adjoining hall. Not because she thought she looked bad, but because she felt suddenly much like what she'd just proclaimed herself not to be. She gave herself a nasty look, as if to say 'knock it off' and then strode outside.

She met Gary and the assembly of crewmen who were installing the view-port for the new super-high pressure tank in the Aquarium wing. He was giving directions to a pair of jib-crane operators who were installing a fifteen foot tall convex lens into a plexiglass recess in the massive entry wall. He wasn't wearing a hard-hat, she noticed and that was probably why her sister had recognized him. He didn't seem to be there for any real reason, other than what he was doing.

Misty leaned back and took in the spectacle, wondering how on earth they'd managed to get the heavy machinery inside. Then, she remembered, there were still sections of this wing of the building that had no walls.

As Gary backed away, she approached him tentatively. "You wanted to see me?"

She had seen a lot of Gary during her trips with Ash. Gary had been Ash's principal rival back then, of course and had seemed to have all the notoriety and success while Ash struggled to find any. She hadn't had any reason to assume that she would find different, where the young Oak was concerned, even if Tracy had talked much recently of his apparent transformation into young adulthood but she was certainly surprised when he turned to face her.

In a way, it seemed Gary still managed to horde all the things Ash lacked. Like an inverse reflection of the impetuous youth, Gary struck her immediately as the button-down sort when he turned to face her, with surprisingly little of his former smugness or ego. A certain bravado was still there, certainly, as she imagined it must've been with his grandfather before it had turned into the eccentricity of old age, but there was no sneer or self-satisfied smirk, where there once would have been. It was easy to see that Gary was a professional now, much like herself. He was cool and collected and if he was pleased with himself and the smart figure he cut in his stainless white lab-coat and slacks (and she was sure that he was, somewhere deep down, of course) he didn't make a huge show out of it.

"Yeah, just wanted to get this paperwork sorted out with you." Gary explained, pointing two fingers at the end of an outstretched arm towards the ongoing work. He thrust out a stacked pile of pink and yellow carbon-copy slips pinned to a clipboard towards her with his other hand. "It was pretty short notice, but I think it should meet your needs pretty well."

Misty glanced over the forms, giving them precursory review before signing them, with a pen she produced from her jacket pocket. Her sisters made the big financial decisions, but everything had to have her signature, since as the Gym's leader, she bore sole responsibility for any decision that concerned it.

"I'm just surprised that you guys were able to put it together so fast for us." Misty replied as she handed back the forms. "I can't imagine that this sort of thing is common." She'd gotten word out to professor Oak only five or six days ago that she might like to put together a deep-sea exhibit in her gymnasium, and that she'd like the labs help designing and filling it. The professor had, of course been thrilled with the idea, as apparently, no one had ever done such such a thing. Now here they were, already half-way to completion.

Gary shrugged. "More common than you might think. The fact that I was able to do most of the specification work myself allowed me to be a little more frugal than I might've had to be about getting the components. The piece that's going in right now used to be part of a submersible's view-port. A little work with the high-speed buffer, and it ought to be good to go."

Misty pulled her lips to the side, taking note of his use of the personal pronoun. "So this was your design, then?"

Gary nodded. "Yup."

Misty decided to quiz him a little bit, just to see if that was the truth. "So, won't the rounded surface of the pane make the Relicanth look way bigger than they actually are? Like a magnifying glass?

Gary nodded. "Yep. That's the reason for the pane that was installed yesterday." He pointed to the recess into which the massive lens was gradually being placed and would eventually be adhered. It was an even more massive plexiglass dome with a concave hollow on the outside, which seemed to be specifically shaped to accept the new lens. "Because of the outside curve of the secondary pane, the light coming from the inside of the tank will be bent back to it's original angle before it hits the eye of the viewer, so actually it'll be more like two magnifying glasses pointed at one another. Basically, it'll look like a flat window from the outside, but in actuality, it'll be an eleven-foot thick dome- able to hold back the massive pressure inside the tank, but as clear as a single sheet of glass.

She'd already figured that bit out on her own, but she kept it to herself. The benefits of the design were a little more complex than that, and he'd dumbed it down significantly for her benefit, but she was satisfied with that answer.

With a smile of her own, to let him know that she wasn't trying to be as mean as she sounded, she cut to the heart of her curiosity on the matter. "So, how come it's you coming out to see me, instead of Tracy?"

Gary matched her smile inch for inch. "I guess its just a matter of interest," he explained, evidently taking no offense. "My work is -rather, _was_ with fossils. Up until recently, it was believed that Relicanth were extinct, so, there's a bit of overlap there between the paleontological and the behavioral. I asked my Grandpa to work on this project."

Misty nodded. Fair enough. "Do you work with Relicanth much, then?"

"Three of the Relicanth that'll be going into this tank when it's finished belong to me, actually." Gary said, perhaps a bit of his old boastfulness showing through.

"Which is great, because up until now, we've had basically no way to simulate their natural environment. We've been getting by with letting them swim around in the river-beds on Grandpa's reservation, which is fine, I mean, technically they can get along there alright, but it hardly simulates their natural environment: Relicanth live near the bottom of the ocean, after all, where the pressure is enormous. Once your aquarium is finished, my Relicanth are going to be very happy." Misty thought she saw a very Ash-like quality in the follow-up, though. Gary too, had an intensely caring nature for his Pokemon, deep down. Once again, Misty wondered if everyone from Pallet Town was like that, perhaps. Some quality to the place that just lent people such a kind nature. She figured that made sense. Everyone she knew from Pallet was _foremost_ kind.

Gary's continued conversation snapped her out of her contemplation. "Besides, think of the significance this has! This will be the first time anyone will have ever observed a Relicanth in anything close to it's natural environment. Up until now, scientists have only ever observed Relicanth in shallow water-conditions. It's possible that we've only scratched the surface of their behavioral patterns. You're making a huge contribution to Tracy and Grandpa's research. I think that's why they were so thrilled to help you."

Misty turned the corners of her lips down, and nodded in appreciation of the gravity of the transaction. "What about you, and your research?" she asked coyly.

"Well, Relicanth is a living fossil. Literally. They exist now, almost exactly as they existed millions and millions of years ago. I stand to learn plenty! Because we know that so little has changed about them, the kind of inferences I'll be able to make about their comfort in this tank environment, will paint a good picture of what their environment and ecology was like, going all the way back to the Devonian era. If everything goes off without a hitch, I might be able to publish a piece about it in Water Pokemon Quarterly."

Misty's eyes sprang wide, skepticism renewed. "You write for WPQ?" Water Pokemon Quarterly was a major publication!

Gary Nodded. "Yep. I did an article last year about how the egg-laying habits of West and East sea Shellos may indicate that they are actually two convergent species of Pokemon, due to Thorson's Rule."

"Oh yeah, I think I did read that," Misty said after a moment of thought. "You wrote about how you think the two different types of Shellos might actually be two separate kinds of Pokemon entirely, that just happen to of evolved similar traits?"

"Yes, their brooding habits suggest they're actually much further removed than just the East and West seas of Sinnoh." Gary explained, summing up the article. "Thorson's rule states that invertebrates from lower latitudes, will always lay more eggs at a time than invertebrates from higher latitudes, and such is the difference between the two variations."

Misty nodded her head, showing that she understood. "I didn't realize that it was you that wrote it, though." She rubbed her fingertips against her chin. "I'm pretty sure I would have recognized your name."

Gary's smooth smile waned somewhat, and he squinted one eye, as though slightly pained by the admittance. "Actually, I use a pseudonym when I publish my research articles. I go by G. Robur, instead of G. Oak-It's the scientific name for Oak."

When she gave him a questioning look and asked why, he heaved a sigh. Just for a moment, she saw his confident facade give way completely. "Well, it's just that it's hard to be seen as a credible research scientist, when your last name is Oak, but your first name isn't Samuel. Sometimes I think people see me as a coat-tail rider." He managed to collect a sort of wry smile, as if unwilling to be so brazenly self-deprecating all at once. "And other times, I think that it might make them feel a little bit intimidated by me; like they have no choice but to usher me along, and pat me on the back because of who my grandpa is, and I don't really like that idea either."

Misty shrugged, and offered her honest evaluation. "Tracey seems to think your work is impressive." She nodded towards the tank. "I don't think anyone will be able to deny that this is, either."

Gary smiled charmingly then, as if her compliment had turned his mood one-eighty. She was a little surprised when his grin actually coaxed out a smile to her own lips, along with a pinkness to her cheeks. It was a very _Gary Oak_ grin. "I'm flattered, really. It's just that honestly, you have no idea how hard it is to stand out, when you live in the shadow of someone who's contributed as much to the field as my Grandpa has."

Misty considered disagreeing with him- that she did, in fact, have a fairly good idea of what it was like to live in someone else's shadow. Three such shadows in fact! As much as she hated to admit it, her sisters were big-time up-and-comers in the field of Pokemon coordinating, and while that particular field was not her own, it did make her sisters, who were now two-time ribbon cup winners, many times contest finalists, hugely successful performers, and very profitable businesswomen, a much bigger deal than she was. She would have to elevate the gym to untold heights to compare to their breakout success, and even if she did, it would likely only add to their clout while only moderately contributing to her own because of their association with it and her. Misty was always going to be the littlest Waterflower, and thought she wasn't sure she'd ever like the idea, there came a time when you just had to do your own thing, and stop worrying about it.

Still, she could tell that Gary, like Ash, was little ate up inside that his career hadn't taken him quite as far or as high as he'd liked, so she left the matter alone. Besides, her sisters might've been budding superstars, but she could still whip them in a battle, while Professor Oak practically founded modern understanding of Pokemon and had contributed more to science than almost three generations of his peers, Gary included. She was in a similar boat, but it was hardly the same. She imagined that it was probably pretty daunting. Before she could even think of commenting, though, he decided to steer the conversation away from the subject.

"I heard Ash rolled through town." Gary said, indicating her hat with an outstretched index finger. "Did he lose a bet to you or something?"

She glanced up, and flicked the brim of the cap, with a growing smirk on her face. She deciding after a moment that she would rather keep the details to herself, though, even if it was only because she knew she'd be in for an earful if Gary ended up giving Ash a hard time over giving her his hat. She didn't imagine that Gary had changed so significantly that he wouldn't take any opportunity that came his way to tease his long-time rival. Though maybe she was more worried that someone might put together the significance of the item to her, and embarrass the hell out of her, rather than any concern for her best friend.

"Or something." she acknowledged ambiguously. "He's training on Mandarin Island right now." She decided not to say expressly why, figuring that if Gary didn't already know, that she wouldn't say.

Gary's smirk at that, told her that she'd probably given him all the information he'd require. "Well, at least he's back on the road again, instead of moping around Pallet Town. Finally training solo now, too." Gary said with a shrug, and she felt that his expression suddenly seemed a little too self-satisfied, once more akin to the old Gary that she'd known so long ago.

In a self-aggrandizing motion, he folded his arms behind his head, and took the conversation in a much unexpected direction. "He tell you who gave him the idea?"

Misty felt her eyebrows flatten out in the face the leading, open-ended question. She was pretty much resigned to the decision, but she still sure as hell didn't think it was a great one. All in all, the choice had probably cost Ash, and would continue to cost him more than any other shortsighted decision of his career, nevermind the potential gain. It seemed like it had come deadly close to costing him his friends (and probably would have, if she hadn't been there to intervene last week) along with his slowly renewing self-esteem, something she'd never have believed that the boy would have risked himself.

As calculating as she could be, she had always understood that there was a limit to pragmatism, especially where Ash was concerned, and in spite of how much things had changed without her over the years, she hadn't been entirely willing to believe that Ash had come to the conclusion on his own. Now she understood.

Though, If Gary thought it would be appropriate to toot his own horn to her over it, he was sadly mistaken. She decided to play it cool, though, instead of doing what she wanted to do.

Rather than out and out threaten Gary, she decided to play it just as coyly as he had. Curling the knuckles of her right fist, she brought them to her opposing hand cracked them loudly. She didn't know if Tracey had shared the nature of her secret hobby with Gary or not, since it seemed likely that Daisy had also pressured him into an oath of secrecy, but from the sudden look of intense concentration that Gary put into the task being performed, and the speed at which the flirtatious smile on his face vanished without a trace, she learned much.

"No, but if I find out who did," she promised casually, "they're in for a world of pain."

Gary chuckled uneasily. "Just wondering."

* * *

Holiday woke up with a a head-ache, too bleary-eyed to see where he was. He tried to bring a hand up to his head, and stabilize his dizziness but found that it was stuck fast. Once his vision cleared up, he realized that it was cuffed to the chair he was sitting in. He looked over to his off hand. It wasn't, so he brought it to his head to complete the work meant for the primary, since he could hardly think of what to do until that matter was resolved.

"Finally awake?" A voice stated as much as asked him, and he was subjected to a sudden strike to his chest from an extended leg, that left him sitting back in the seat with the imprint of a finely cobbled heel in his chest.

Holiday looked up into the face of his employer, who still seemed for all the world as unthreatening as he always had, in spite of the recollection of why and where he was came back to him, as the pain in his chest made him forget the pain in his head. He brought his hand down from his temple to rub at his chest. "I had this weird dream that I was all alone, and I was rolling a big poke ball...and there was an Ekans in a vest." he drawled sarcastically, as he let his hand fall back into his lap. His neck didn't feel very good either, so he just gave up trying to rub at his aches for now.

"You've always been quite the comedian, haven't you, Holiday?" Kazuo asked him, leafing through a manilla folder, though he hardly seemed amused.

"Not really." Holiday replied, casually. "I just thought 'witty sense of humor' would round out my resume."

Kazuo snapped the folder shut, with a glare. "Tell me a little bit about what you did before you came into my employ, Holiday."

"Aw, you know." Holiday began dismissively, slapping his thigh. "Graduate school, then tramped around Hoenn for a while."

"You're lying."

"Of course I'm lying. Do I look like the sort of guy who'd willingly ride in a cattle-car?" Holiday snorted.

"Is this some sort of game to you?"

"I usually don't play the sort of games you need hand-cuffs for." Holiday rolled his eyes, but then paused, taking an awkward look at his boss. "Not that I'm implying anything-

"Shut your fucking mouth!"

Holiday brought his lips together tightly as the muzzle of an auto-loading pistol was put to his forehead. He didn't close his eyes in the face of the lethal threat, but he did shut up.

"How long have you been in contact with them?" Kazuo asked plainly.

"With who?" Holiday asked at once.

He felt the mechanical action of Kazuo pulling back the hammer with his thumb, as he repeated the question, and it brought a slight waver to his voice, as the administrator repeated his own.

"How long have you been in contact with the PLF, Holiday? How long have they known about our guest?" Kazuo painfully ground the protruding barrel into Holiday's head.

Holiday's head was a flurry, once he'd absorbed the question, and put it into proper order. "What are you talking about?" All the pieces were knocked astray again as the grip of the pistol collided with his cheekbone so hard that it made his ears ring.

"Let me ask my first question again: What did you do before you came into my employ, Holiday?" Kazuo asked, careful to place rigid emphasis and timing on the name of the man he was interrogating.

The admin paused for a minute, grasping for the answer in his jumbled up thoughts. "I-I was an intern, following my post-graduate work."

"Where?"

"Silph Co." Holiday responded, holding his fingertips gingerly over the area he'd been struck, partially to caress the growing bruise, and partially to shield himself from further abuse.

"Doing what, in detail?"

"I worked in the Technical Machine Labs. I did keynote research for four different projects while I was there."

"And what became of those projects, Holiday?"

"The company dropped them."

"For what reason?"

"Competitor companies put out similar products before the projects could be brought into market production."

"And why was that?"

Holiday gave him a plaintive look, suddenly realizing what this was all about. "You know why."

Kazuo nodded. "Because you were never really hoping to find a job at Silph Co." The stern little man crossed his arms. "You're a corporate spy, Holiday. You leaked pertinent details about those projects to competitors, in exchange for money."

Holiday, who made no move to deny it, leaned a bit further back in his seat. He wished he could cross his arms. He didn't suppose that it would make any difference if he mentioned that it was likely that Cipher itself had made no small fortune on the disseminated findings, or at least gotten a comparative leg up from Silph Co. Global's floundering sales.

As dead to rights caught as he'd ever been, Holiday stared openly at the man before him, wondering just how detailed to contents of that folder must've been. He figured that it was more than likely that the buyers in at least one of those instances of espionage had been an agent in the employ of Cipher itself.

"Do I have your attention?" Kazuo asked him.

"You had my attention when you stuck the gun in my face, boss." Holiday noted, beginning to regain his footing a bit. On cue, the weapon was pressed against his forehead again, and he frowned, knowing that he'd brought it on himself.

"Good. Now tell me how long you've been in contact with the PLF."

Holiday sighed. "Six months."

Kazuo nodded, and tried not to show that he was perturbed by that notion. That exceeded his time-tables by a great deal. The team had only come into the possession of the sample eight weeks ago, after all. There was no way Holiday could've had that sort of foresight, even if he did know about the guest. Hell, that was well before Holiday had even been involved with Team Nebula, and even he had never imagined that they would find such a thing.

"In what capacity?" Kazuo asked.

"Capacity?" Holiday dared ask, gaining a bit of courage from Kazuo's slackening grip, though it was renewed instantly as the question was poised again wordlessly.

"Just scoping them out! I'm just looking for someone, is all." Holiday blurted out, though he really wasn't sure why he was telling the truth here. He hadn't told the truth so far. It had been six projects, not four, and he'd actually been following the PLF in one 'capacity' or another for nearly a year, now.

This apparently threw the executive for a loop. He removed the handgun from Holiday's head, and though he continued to poise it threateningly toward his face, his aggression seemed to dissipate some.

"Who?" Kazuo was quick to ask.

Deciding to roll with it, Holiday just told him the truth. "A researcher I did my graduate studies with. Name's Ein."

Kazuo recognized the name as being tied to some of the research involving the Shadow Pokemon project, and perked. "Why?" The executive prompted, now seeming more curious than anything.

Holiday, in spite of himself smiled. "No honor amongst thieves." The matter was personal, and he hoped that we would not have to go into more detail than that. Deciding it best to take the lead, he prompted a query of his own. "This wouldn't happen to be about that PLF press-release tape would it?"

"Yes." Kazuo said venomously. "It would."

Holiday understood now. Kazuo thought that whatever had been said during the press release seemed too well informed regarding this 'guest' and was now looking for a mole inside the organization. The admin sat forward in his seat, knowing there was very little he could do to clear his name as suspect number one. "What do I have to say, to make this water under the bridge?"

Kazuo opened up his mouth to speak, but Holiday, perhaps a bit too forward, cut him off. "There's no way either of us can prove that I've done more or less than you think I have. I've had de facto control over all ingoing an outgoing data traffic through the company server since I started. You wouldn't be able to find any evidence to condemn me, because I would have erased it as soon as it was created. Ispo facto, any evidence I might present, would likewise be subject to me tampering with it, and inadmissible."

"So you're telling me that I should shoot you in the face now, rather than try to get to the bottom of this." Kazuo said, mocking the admin's lazy tone, once again bringing the firearm to bear.

"Well, that said, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence." Holiday said weakly.

"Enlighten me."

"Well, for one, I've been overseas."

"So have the PLF. That hardly excuses you. Try again."

"I don't know if you knew this or not, but, I'm actually pretty well paid by the company. Six figure salary and everything. My internship at Silph Co was unpaid. As in zip, zilch, nada."

"You expect me to believe that you're content enough with this job that you'd have no reason to betray company secrets?" Kazuo said with a certain venom. "That money is your sole motive?"

"I was sort of hoping you might." Holiday shrugged. It fit the bill from his perspective.

"I'm not convinced. And you're taxing my already thin patience, Holiday."

Holiday sighed. "Okay, how about this: I have no fucking idea who the guest even i-" Distracted somewhat by the questioning glare that Kazuo laid over him, Holiday almost didn't see the blinking red light atop Kazuo's desk. Somehow, it still struck a nerve, in spite of the dark situation "-What the fuck is that? Jeeze boss, I thought the mug full of pens was strange."

Kazuo looked away from the admin, to the same blinking beacon on his desk, blinking out a Morse code message.

"D-E-S-I-S-T-N-O-W."

Holiday, who'd been working on his hand-cuff for a while now, finally popped it loose. He thought for a moment that he might grab the gun out of Kazuo's hand while his back was turned, but he decided that he would probably lose that particular engagement, what with the strength and speed Kazuo had already been shown to possess. He wasn't fond of the idea of getting choked out again, at any rate. He considered running, but that didn't seem all that wise either. He was fast, and could probably at least outrun Kazuo in a dead heat, but he could still take a bullet in the back as easy as anybody. Instead, he just continued to sit quietly in the chair, as Kazuo turned to face him once more.

His jaw firmly set, Kazuo withdrew the gun, and laid it shakily on the table, his apprehension drawn from a new source. Holiday's admittance seemed believable enough. Particularly that Holiday had used the word 'who' instead of 'what'. It didn't matter at this point, anyways. Any concern he might've had dissipated the second he'd translated the message.

If it was going to end his problem for him or not, Kazuo wasn't sure. What bothered him more than that, was that it seemed to know precisely what was going on up here. He didn't let on, though. At least not outwardly.

Principally, what he needed right now, was an ally. Not out of fear, necessarily, but out of sensibility. Holiday had all of the intellect and sensibility he would require in such a person, and it wouldn't do to drive any more of a wedge between himself and a man who was clearly going to look to serve the better of two masters when the time came, if his history was any indication.

He made a gesture of concession toward the administrator. "Water under the bridge."

Holiday, at once, stood from his seat, and tossed the handcuffs onto the table beside the gun, as though he were simply relieve to be able to stand from the uncomfortable chair again. When Kazuo gave him a an incredulous look, he wrung his hands. "I have very supple wrists, boss, what can I say?"

The two seemed to share a look then. Holiday wouldn't forget today, not by a long shot, but for now, he thought it best to just smirk and carry on just as he had before, for lack of a better plan. Kazuo, likewise, hardly saw the matter at rest.

"I need you to get sub-level. Down into the Reaction labs. There's something that needs done." Kazuo stated simply.

Holiday, quirking a brow, leaned against the edge of the desk, at a healthy distance to complain. "Didn't you say those levels were sealed off a few weeks ago? It could take me a days work my way through."

"Then you should get started right away." Kazuo stated coldly, returning at last to his seat, a place where Holiday was much more comfortable with him being. "Let me know when you're there." From a drawer, the executive produced his belt, and tossed it to him.

After buckling it on, Holiday left, ostensibly in much the same mood he'd entered. The ever-smug administrator pulled open the heavy rosewood doors and looked at the security guard to either side of it with a sneer as he passed outward. "Lookit you turds." He said mockingly, pointing to both as he revolved in step. "You look so surprised to see me right now."

They did look pretty shocked to see him leave. On his feet, at least.

He thumbed the button for the elevator, and as he took the long ride down into Realgam's below-ground research labs, he considered the events that had just transpired, with a ginger rub of his swollen cheek, and an uncomfortable roll of his shoulders. Then suddenly, if to ease the wound-up tension in his chest, he burst into laughter and set his mind into contemplating the tools he would need for the job.

* * *

"Ritchie!" She shouted, "Ritchie, it's him! Oh my goodness it's him!" She pointed out over the wharf at the maroon-haired Champion at the far end.

She'd met Ritchie on the ferry, and decided that she rather liked him. He was obviously a skilled battler after all, since he also had a black invitation just like her. Also, Ritchie hadn't recognized her, unlike umpteen other trainers on the boat. Ritchie had put two and two together when he'd heard some ace-trainer scrambling around on deck, asking everyone if they'd seen the Steven Stone grant-winner hiding anywhere, and she'd conspicuously hunched her shoulders, but he wasn't saying anything, _and that took a considerable amount of the pressure off_

Normally she would have jumped at the opportunity to battle, but today was special. She was going to be battling in front of Lance after all, and she needed all of her Pokemon at 110%! She'd be damned if she was going to show up tired.

"You don't have to scream, I'm right here." Ritchie said, with a chuckle, as she shook his arm. He wondered if it was less a friendly gesture to direct his attention, than it was she needed physical support to remain standing. Her knees looked rubbery.

He smiled. He almost didn't believe her when she said her name was Uranium. They made fast friends, though. He'd spent the last few hours just talking to her about the ins and outs of high-level battling. She looked like she never got tired of the stuff. "Looks like the ferry is just about docked. We'll be down there soon enough. I'm betting Lance will want to talk to us."

"Holy crap, you think?" Uranium yelped in a mixture of excitement and dread. Ritchie's attention, however, was drawn across the flabbergasted girl to the burly, frowning man on the opposite side of her.

"I don't see Ash anywhere." The huge man commented, in his impossibly gravely voice. "Do you Chikorita?"

"Chika!" the grass type chirped, in the negative.

Ritchie perked, and then tilted his head. "Ash? Ash Ketchum?" Ritchie spun to the rail again, to survey the wharf. Various ship-yard workers coming and going. Landing crew, tying down the ferry, and the five commanding figures standing on the steps to the north, awaiting their arrival. "What are you talking about, Silver? Ash was supposed to be here?"

Uranium turned to look at Silver as well. She'd decided that she really didn't like him, pretty much as fast as she'd decided she liked Ritchie. Silver gave off that vibe that just said how surly of an old bastard he was, and every time he opened his mouth, he let out an obnoxious, patronizing laugh and called someone by a demeaning name. He called Ritchie 'Half-pint' almost exclusively and had immediately dubbed her 'Bang-bang' when Ritchie had shared the name his new acquaintance. Still, the mention of Ash caught her off guard.

As they disembarked from the boat, the huge man scratched his head.

"Lance told me he was invited." Silver explained, with some concern.

"How do you guys know Ash Ketchum?" Uranium asked suddenly, surprising the both of them.

"Uh." Silver murmured with a slightly lost expression.

"I competed against him in the Kanto League a few years ago." Ritchie explained. "Why? Do you know him?"

"Yea, I just met him a week or two ago." Uranium said. "Battled him at Pokemon Tech."

This of course, ignited a flurry of questions between the three of them, but all of it took a back-seat when they met up with Lance, flanked on either side by Lorelei, Bruno, Agatha, and Koga.

Silver, hardly starstruck, was of course the first to speak. "I thought you you had invited Ash?" he asked immediately, and Uranium felt that she could not have been the only one to glare in response to his rude comment.

Lance hardly seemed bothered, though, and dismissed the lack of manners as though it were a unnoticeable. "I had. I assumed he'd be with you three."

"He's not." Silver said, bluntly.

Lance pulled his lips to the side, in a moment of genuine displeasure, but it passed almost as quickly as it had come into view. "That's unfortunate. I was sure he would show."

Silver only grunted, and didn't seem satisfied with that.

"Perhaps he put his time to better use." Lance said sincerely. So sincerely, in fact, that Uranium almost found herself believing it, if only for as long as it took her to realize that this was an elite four training camp, and there was, in fact, no possible better use of a trainers time, than being here.

Silver just grunted again, without actually responding to that one way or another and rolled his eyes. "No reason for me to be here, then. Back to work." He said dismissively, and turned around to depart the scene. Then he stopped short, as if remembering his manners. "Half-pint," he acknowledged in parting. "Bang-bang."

Uranium snorted in the face of his entirely unwanted nickname, but noticed that Ritchie seemed uneasy with his sudden departure, having evidently expected him to stay. "Er. See ya around, Silver."

Silver only waved casually over his shoulder, as his Chikorita chirped a farewell past the man's spiny mane of gunmetal gray hair.

Agatha was the first to scoff in the silence. "That oaf never did have any manners. You really should pick better friends, Lance."

Uranium was about to nod her agreement, but Silver it seemed, was not quite out of earshot, and laughed that obnoxious laugh of his. "Hey, I _heard_ that _granny_!"

"Good." Agatha offered, hardly raising her voice in kind, though Ritchie could see a smile working it's way into the deep lines of her face, as if to suggest that she didn't feel nearly so harshly about Silver as she had proclaimed. Bruno and Lorelei chuckled easily, and Koga, a very traditional Kantonese man, said nothing, and remained focused on the ground.

When Silver's flame-patterned trench-coat faded into the crowd, Uranium turned back to look the Champ in the eye.

She felt the corner of her lip quiver as the man she had idolized for most of her life, the single biggest figure in Pokemon battling, as far as half the world was concerned, laid his hand on her shoulder, and gave it a consoling pat. He had his other hand on Ritchie's, but she didn't give a crap. This moment was hers alone.

"Well, at any rate, we're glad to have two trainers to compete with this year."

She felt herself nod ignorantly in response to that, and she had to muscle down a squeal from somewhere.

"Ritchie, I hear you did well in the Silver conference this year." Lance mentioned, with a smile.

"Yep. Finalist." Ritchie nodded.

"And the 'Stone grant-winner. From Unova, no less. You must be quite something." He said, already seeming as impressed as she'd hoped. "We're always excited to cooperate and compete with our peers overseas. It's an honor to finally meet you."

He stood back to his full height and nodded, before sticking a thumb over his shoulder, towards the league sports-center that seemed to fill the island's horizon. "Right this way, and we'll get you two all set up."

Ritchie felt like he was about to bust with excitement, and he nearly took off after the receding elite and their champion at full speed, but Uranium desperately caught hold of his arm again.

When he looked back to her, her expression made her seem like she was about to burst into tears. She let out a long warbling moan what seemed like discomfort, and teetered a bit on her feet, so much so that she practically fell against him.

"Hey!" he whispered. "Are you alright?"

"Honored." Uranium whimpered, finally regaining her footing. "Lance said he was honored. To meet. With me!" she managed between labored gasps.

"You really need to straighten out your priorities." Ritchie commented with a chuckle and a roll of his eyes.

Uranium blushed a deep scarlet, and shooed away his attention with that, taking up stride behind him. It wasn't long before she was giggling to herself, though.

_Lance! Honored! To meet __**her**__!_

* * *

Ash found himself stranded amidst the crush of people, with only the snarling hair-trimmers before him, and an ocean of cavalry-hatted shouting muscle behind him. There was nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.

He yelped as he was thrown into the upholstered chair, his shoulders pinned down when he tried to stand back up again. He demanded to know what the big idea was just a moment too late, though, when a buzzing sound passed over his head, and a huge clump of his own hair landed on his lap. He let out another horrified squeak and redoubled his efforts to escape the grasping hands, to no avail.

The moment his forced haircut was complete, he was jerked into an upright position and then stretched commandingly into all manner of exaggerated poses as a measuring tape was held to his features. It felt like before he could even blink, an olive set of fatigues, folded neatly beneath a set of black boots and white accoutrements was forced into the awaiting grasp he'd intended to be a confused, pleading gesture.

When he asked what to do with it, two of the men in cavalry caps were as deep in his personal space as anyone had ever been, screaming into his face, asking in return if he was stupid in a variety of not so kind ways, and propelling him with the force of their shouts, as much as guiding him into the changing room.

Too stunned to do anything else and too frightened besides, Ash rapidly removed his own clothing, and stuffed it hard into his backpack, before donning the new attire. He didn't dare waste the time required to look over at Pikachu's confused coo, as he laced the boots for fear that someone would be into the changing room after him, making sure he wasn't wasting time.

When he emerged from the other door, someone was shouting and shoving him along again, and eventually he found himself standing in a row of other people, behind the building. He was very confident that he wouldn't have had any idea what to do or how to stand, if everyone wasn't already standing at attention , legs perfectly spaced in accordance with the footprints painted onto the pavement. Very willing at this point to avoid being howled at again, he did his best impression of the others and strictly avoided moving.

That didn't stop them, though. Two meaty hands shot out as soon as the first hunched-over snarling drill-instructor crossed his path, as though simply looking for someone to harass. They roughly pulled at his collar, and pushed him sharply back.

"Fix that lapel! Tuck in your shirt, puke! You're a disgrace! And where is your fucking cover?"

"C-cover?" Ash managed, still barely able to push words past his lips, as he rapidly flattened down the collar of his fatigue, and set to stuffing it into his belt. "Wh-wh-"

The man lurched violently towards him, practically headbutting him as he pushed himself nose to nose with Ash! "I'll ask the questions puke! And don't let me hear another word come out of your mouth unless it's sir! Understood?"

Ash nodded rapidly to show that he did, but apparently that was unacceptable as well, since the instructor immediately let him know that he could not hear Ash's brains rattle, nor was he psychic.

"Sir!" Ash said quickly there-after, forgoing the obvious 'yes'. That seemed like it was enough to satisfy him. He would've let out a sigh of relief at that, but it seemed like there could be another instructor watching him at any time, and it was probably one of the things that would earn him another grilling, so he held it in, miserably.

When he finally dared look around, careful to keep his eyes forward, he spotted Doc, standing across from him , opposite to the line he was standing in. He met eyes with the Admin, and was surprised to find that he too was wearing the green fatigues, and was taking a tongue-lashing of his own. To Ash's consternation though he seemed to be eating it up. He stood there with rigidity, and confidence as they blasted away at him from all sides, in stark contrast to the shock and obvious discomfort that was still making his heart beat fast.

A sound drew his attention away, though, and when his head snapped to the side, he was shoved roughly from behind by another unseen drill-instructor, and straightened reflexively. A huge man strode into view soon enough, towering over him and everyone else, but especially him. A shock of yellow spikes above a buzz-cut trim couldn't have been anyone else.

"My name is First Lieutenant Surge, and I am your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, the last word out of your filthy holes when you are called upon will be "Sir", or there will be hell to pay! Do you babies understand that?"

There was a chorus of 'Yes sir's from most of the people standing at attention, but it seemed halfhearted. Ash hardly dared to open his mouth, and was jostled harshly for his hesitant silence.

"Bullshit, I can't hear you!" Lt. Surge complained, raising his voice an octave, and nearly startling Ash off of his feet, as he turned to survey his side of the inspection line. The lieutenant was an enormous man, far larger than anyone he'd ever met on his journey. He remembered Surge from before, but meeting him like this did not seem to compare to the practically friendly engagement on the Pokemon battlefield all those years ago.

"Yes sir!" Ash bellowed.

The Lieutenant moved along just as before, his stride spaced and even, arms tight at his sides. "If you disgusting pukes leave my command, if you survive recruit training, you will be soldiers; efficient and skilled members of an elite Kanto defense corps. But until that day you are nothing. You are the absolute lowest form of life on this planet. You are not even human, fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganized, undisciplined pieces of Dunsparse shit!"

The Lieutenant stopped to let that sink in, and it did. All around him, everyone seemed to frown at that. Ash almost gasped when a drill instructor slapped a fatigue lid over his buzzed head, and pushed the bill down over his forehead, but he held it in.

"You will not like me. But the more you hate me the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no inequality here. In my eyes you are all equally worthless. None of you are beautiful or special or unique. Here you will only be differentiated by your will to continue, and your ability to perform. Your charming personality means exactly dick."

Ash felt Doc's glare fall powerfully on him from across the way, but he tried not to look back. He had a feeling that he was still being watched.

"My orders are simply to weed out all whiners, sissies, crybabies, wimps, or wusses who do not have the fortitude serve in the Pokemon Corps! Do you maggots understand that?"

"Yes sir!" the entire platoon shouted.

"Then Fall in!"

Ash felt his panic somehow elevate at that moment, as everyone strode after the lieutenant towards a bus waiting at the end of the parking lot, and he found himself desperately wanting to run in the opposite direction. But he saw instructors herding those who seemed hesitant, and knew that he was hardly going to slip away.

For the first time he seemed to notice Pikachu whining into his ear, obviously confused. "Pikapiii."

It didn't sound accusing, but he almost couldn't help but hear it that way. He swallowed hard.

"Pikachu? I think I just made a _huge_ mistake."

* * *

**A/N:** I pick him up, then I knock him down. Don't act like you didn't know what this was! I imagine that I've probably alienated big chunk of my readership with this chapter but, hey, them's the breaks.

_"You keep fucking with Ash, and raising more and more questions, and you wont answer any of them, and I don't even know what you're talking about any more, and now there's just too many characters, and I hate you, and what happened to Team Rocket?"_

Relax, baby-bird. I'll feed you. You just gotta wait it out.

Interesting note: you'd be surprised at how hard it is not to rip off every war-movie ever when you start talking about boot-camp. So, after a long debate, I compromised and ripped off the_ best_ one. Heh.

I really wanted to get this chapter out before school started but as you can see, that didn't happen. I'm working on the next chapter in my spare time, either way. Not sure when it'll be, exactly, but I'll also be working on rolling edits and formatting updates to existing chapters in the meantime (god knows they need it), so keep an eye out for that, if it's your thing. I may also be changing the name of this story at some point, since the original title was always more of a place-holder, so if you haven't put it on your alert list yet, you might do that as well. Anyways, until next time.


	13. Chapter XIII

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Things get harder for Ash, as he begins training in the Pokemon Corps. Can he and Pikachu make it through together, or can they even stay together at all? What will Holiday find in the depths of Realgam Tower? And how fares Paul's run at Championship status?

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XIII**

"The Harsh Reality of It"

Ash found himself standing in front of a bunk-bed, with his legs set at shoulder-width apart, arms to his side, still wondering how he'd managed to screw things up this bad. What was he going to do? What the hell was his mother going to think?

Why did everything have to keep turning to shit? Why couldn't he have just kept his big mouth shut? Every time something went wrong, everything he ended up doing to change it just made things way worse, and this was a prime example. When was he gonna catch a break?

These were just periphery thoughts, though. His biggest concern was Surge screaming into his face. He was pretty sure if he had hair still, it'd be getting blown backwards. It took him a moment to sift through all the cuss-words and see what it was that the enormous man was taking issue with now.

A five-fingered point of the hand, leveled at his collar, told him the source of the grievance. He glanced subtly downward, taking in the two brown-tipped yellow ears quivering near his lapel.

"You have three seconds, Ketchum!" Surge shouted. "I want that pikachu out of your jacket, and into a poke ball, or I will have you kissing dirt and sucking wind so hard you'll think you're married to 'em."

Ash's mouth involuntarily hung open. He went to respond, and felt all the weight of his situation, the accumulated tonnage of the past several weeks, magnified intensely. He tried to find some example that might save him; someone else with their pokemon out- at least one? It was a common thing, after all, right?

Every trainee, though, stood rigid, a full set of six poke balls stowed on their hip, except him.

"I can't, sir." Ash said, dutifully, though it was really the last thing he wanted to have to tell the imposing man. His real sense of duty, rather, was to Pikachu.

"Can't my ass, Ketchum! You'll wear a dress and dance the Watusi if I say you will! Now put that Pokemon in a ball and keep it there at all times, unless ordered otherwise, or I will PT you until you fucking die of exhaustion." The one-on-one drilling would have been suitably humiliating, had he not been so caught up in trying to worm his way out of the situation. He could still hear several of the other recruits laugh at him, though, before being pounced upon by other instructors.

"He doesn't have a ball," Ash explained, dutifully tacking a hasty "sir!" on the end, though he realized that there was no way in hell that Pikachu would be in a poke ball, even if he did. Pikachu was his best buddy! He was with Pikachu all the time, and that was how they both liked it. Plus, Pikachu had never liked being in a poke ball anyways. He hoped that explanation was going to suffice.

It didn't. Surge motioned for another DI and in an instant, a Poke ball was pressed against his chest. "Get it done, Ketchum." Surge commanded in a low voice.

Ash looked at the ball, and at the questioning face looking up at him from his collar, and it did not take him long at all to decide on his course of action. He turned his hand over, and let the poke ball fall to his feet. He didn't look away from the powerful glare that Surge locked him with either. He almost glared back, and shouted defiantly that he wouldn't, and that nobody could make him, but he withered at the thought, and eventually settled with repeating himself. "I can't, sir."

He felt himself swell inside at the heinous thought. He didn't even want to be here, much less go through with this! How could they expect him to do something like this? He wasn't even supposed to be here! It was a mistake! How could they possibly understand?

He wasn't given much time to contemplate the matter, as two D. I.s swept in from the side, and hooked him under his arms, practically tearing him a foot off the floor. "Your ass is grass, Ketchum." the electric-type trainer growled with unrivaled malice.

Doc watched him go, with a poorly concealed smirk on his face, as the three towering drill instructors carried him outside in a frenzy of thrashing and shouting. This was going far better than he'd even hoped it would.

"The rest of you will divide into squads, and proceed to onto the grounds to begin today's physical training." a junior DI, taking control of the situation in the absence of his superiors, piped up. "Come forward, as your name is called."

Doc ended up in a group with three Orange Islanders, something he felt more or less neutral about. He didn't have a strong opinion of Kantonese people, and as a rule, he figured that most people were worth about as much as they proved themselves to be. After all, Holiday wasn't everything he seemed at first, right? Stood to reason that other people could be just as unassuming. Still, they didn't look like much to him. The heaviest of them was a portly guy, about as tall as he was, and not even close to being as fit. The other guy was skinnier, and even shorter, and shaped more to what seemed like that typical islander stature, to him. They both seemed to be awful chatty with the third one, a girl about Ash's height and weight, which was to say, significantly smaller than even the others.

Seemed like they were giving her a buncha shit about something, to Doc. Not that he cared, since mostly he just hoped that they would stay out of his way, and give him free reign to make Ash's life miserable. He tried not to seem to interested in what was going on, as they were marched past the parade grounds in loose formation.

"I don't even know why you came, Mel." one of them said.

"It's not like we couldn't handle it." the other guy, who sounded a bit older offered, as if to moderate the point a bit, with reason.

She didn't sound like she was having any of it, though. "I've got just as much reason to be here as either of you!"

He didn't bother to watch, but he got the feeling that they were rolling their eyes at her, because she made a frustrated sound just before a few D. I.s cut their way into formation and started setting them straight.

When at last they made it to the obstacle course, the four of them stood at strict attention, Doc by pragmatism, the other three by necessity., seeing as how there was a rather severe looking DI ready to climb up their asses at a moments notice.

"All of you maggots are going to run this obstacle course!" the DI shouted. "The first squad to get all it's men across the finish line, earns double-helpings at dinner."

There was a whoop of excitement, under which he couldn't help but hear one of his squad-mates lean towards their female member and remark, "_Men_, heh."

Prescient of the general support of this idea, the DI tempered it with an addendum, "But that's because they're gonna take it from the last of you cream-puffs to haul his doughy ass across! And that goes for his whole damn squad!"

After a sobered murmur of uncertainty, the drill instructors began to explain the nature of the obstacles, and the order in which they were to be taken, but Doc was now too busy watching four figures recede into the distant treeline.

Ash wasn't quite aware of where he was being taken, or really, where exactly this place actually was. He assumed it was some rural area near Vermillion, maybe off of route 7, or something, but it was hard to tell, since he'd spent most of the bus-ride in a stupor of confusion The two junior D. I.s didn't seem to have much trouble carrying him thus far, so he was a little surprised when they dumped him flat on his face. The sudden face-plant, and the fact that Pikachu zapped him hard, as he practically smothered the electric-type with his fall didn't help him orient himself any.

"Pushups." Surge commented dryly.

"How many?" he asked. One of the D. I.s put a boot-sole against his back and pinned him to the ground until he remembered his manners. "-sir" he managed, finally, relieved at least that Pikachu seemed to have worked himself out of the way enough to avoid any discharge.

"How ever many it takes, for you to come to your senses. We'll keep going until _I_ get tired." Surge assured him, yet again.

Ash had already decided that he'd do as many as was necessary, though. He could do whatever Surge demanded, except _that._

* * *

"Look, you can either tell me what you want me to do, or you can tell me how to do it. Not both." the maintenance man, a graying old codger, probably in his late 50s, who obviously had very little patience for him, snarled. His Drilbur stopped working too, and gave him that sort of wide-open-eyed, stare that everyone seemed to give him. He stopped the jack-hammer he was using to avoid having to yell over it in the same fashion Holiday had.

The admin just brought his eyes back down from a high rolling maneuver, and geared back his volume. He pointed first at the man, and then at the job, a massive security door sealed shut weeks earlier on Kazuo's order "Look, I totally get that you're like, one of those near-pension guys who's been working here since they were knee-high to a socket-spanner, or whatever cute little saying you blue-collar types like to use, so you don't think you really need to put any more muscle into it than the union minimum, but I'm telling you, there's three feet of ballistic concrete here. We don't have time to be fucking around. I need through this door."

"And I'm telling you, Sir-" Holiday liked it when people called him that, except when gearing up to give him a good sass-mouthing, like this old guy was about to, "that if I fuck up those tumblers trying to power my way through this, it's going to add days to the job. I'll have to get a cutting torch down here, and it'll be no kinda fun for anybody. You don't even wanna know what I'm making in triple-overtime and hazard pay already."

Holiday wasn't impressed. As far as he was concerned the only job-hazard here was the extreme likelihood that he was gonna put his foot up this old guys ass and use him to kick the door down, but everyone had opted out of this work detail, on the fact that Kazuo had had these labs sealed because of what he claimed to be a poisonous fume-leak. No amount of convincing could persuade most of them otherwise. Why he'd gotten stuck with this surly asshole, and his hard-hatted Drilbur was beyond him. Before he could launch one parting rebuke, though, a dark figure interceded.

Kazuo, out of nowhere, appeared between them in the seemingly well lit, and relatively uncluttered acessway. "Mr. Grayson. I just wanted to come down and show my personal gratitude for your continued service to this company. Your section chief tells me you've put in almost eighty hours this week already." The sleek and slender man extended his hand to shake, and the old maintenance man, looking more impressed and embarrassed than proud, shook it briskly. "Dedication like yours is what this enterprise

relies on to be as successful and profitable as it is. I thank you on behalf of both myself and the shareholders."

Holiday, behind, shot a dirty look towards Grayson, but shortly realized that it was Kazuo who should've been the one he was directing his ire at. What was with all this backbone of the company crap? This guy had taken almost 10 hours to break through the last checkpoint, and he was already on hour 7 with this one. He wasn't exactly a model of efficiency, as far as Holiday was concerned.

One little information leak, and Kazuo had practically put him through a table, and threatened him at gunpoint for an admission, before even checking his facts. Though, as much as Holiday disliked the double-standard, it was easy for him to understand it.

It was a very militaristic standpoint, really: If the army experiences success, it is because of the enlisted. If the army experiences failure, it is because of the officers. He was an officer. He wasn't sure he liked the notion of being shit on every time something went badly for Kazuo, but this was the nature of the job he had taken, and he'd taken it for very good reasons. The potential gain heavily outweighed the risk, even if it had already been made clear to him, that the potential was death.

He watched Kazuo continue to shower the man with praises, with crossed arms. A lot had been laid on the table of late, and though it had mostly been Holiday himself, he couldn't help but wonder what Kazuo's real story was. It bothered him to think that someone knew more about him, than he did about them, but soon, Holiday would break through into the reaction labs. He could settle with knowing more about Kazuo's secrets than he knew about the man.. He had never been that interested in people.

He was surprised when Kazuo rounded on him, his voice still courteous and professional, but without any of the smiling enthusiasm that he'd shown Mr. Grayson, since both of them knew that Holiday hardly cared. "Holiday." he acknowledged. "If you'll come with me."

Since it didn't sound much like a request, he followed along without giving a sarcastic answer, which was probably the point. The admin followed Kazuo down the access-way, and through the heavy door on the far side of it, leaving Mr. Grayson alone, to resume jack-hammering away at the door-jamb. The sound faded to a dull roar as the massive portal swung shut.

"You're making good progress. I imagine that in a few more days, we'll be down to the Marine Labs." Kazuo noted.

The work was taking much longer than Holiday hoped. Thus far they'd opened two doors out of the 16 required. The Marine Labs were still two floors above the reaction labs. "Sure." Holiday said, refusing to acknowledge whether or not the comment was an insincere compliment or a rebuke. "Maybe I should get out my pail and sand-shovel. We might make better progress that way, huh?"

"You're more than welcome to use one of the maintenance departments pneumatic hammers." Kazuo offered. "The gravity of what you'll find down there is certainly enough to warrant a little elbow grease of your own, Holiday."

Holiday looked down at his hands, as though inspecting the state of a manicure, though he wore the same white gloves as always. Kazuo wondered if those hands had ever even seen any work, since even the palms of those gloves hardly seemed grayed at all. "I doubt that."

Kazuo frowned, unsure if he should simply tell the administrator what lay at the end of his task, specifically. He didn't, since he wasn't entirely sure what his own plan was, but he might've expected Holiday to be a little more enthusiastic. He tried to make it seem a little more related to Holiday's interests.

"Holiday, you are an accomplished scientist." Kazuo said, and at first, Holiday wasn't sure whether the boss was beginning a complaint or just making a verbal note. He cut him off anyway.

"No, I'm an accomplished Engineer," the admin corrected. "Scientists are just people who double-check nature."

Scientists cared about the why, and he only concerned himself with the how. The where and when were not important either, because to an engineer those were always the here and now. Once, in school, a physics professor had told him that engineers just stood on the backs of mental giants, and made something as fast as they could. Then, when something went wrong, they always pointed the fingers back at the scientist, the researcher who had made the findings to begin with. He'd made sure to tell him that if the scientific community could get it's shit straight, nobody would have to keep pointing back at them.

Kazuo saw it as something like the complaints of a child who thought it important to differentiate between toy cars and toy trucks, since both seemed rather meager by comparison to what Holiday would soon come to discover. "You have no appreciation for study of the natural world?" Kazuo asked.

Holiday didn't think it was really all that pertinent. "It's not at the top of my list, no." The admin scoffed. "I'll Let someone else worry about whether Pokemon prefer to drink filtered or distilled water, thanks."

"Ah, so it's Pokemon, then? Pokemon Research?" Kazuo wondered if he was digging a little deeper into this conundrum, but then, he wondered if he really wanted to. Maybe Holiday was just walking him around in circles to be cantankerous. It was hard to tell with the man what was what, at times.

Holiday puffed contemptuously. "Don't even get me started." To all present though, this, of course, meant: please, get me started. "Pokemon Research is probably the most over-funded, fluffed-up pseudo-science there is."

"Never mind that it's been at the forefront of nearly every technological advancement in the past 50 years." Kazuo drawled, thinking that he'd pinned Holiday somewhat.

The admin just twisted his argument, though. "I said it was over-funded and fluffed up. I didn't say it was insignificant."

"Then, your major qualm is..." Kazuo drifted off, promptingly.

"That money and effort is expended for the benefit of Pokemon, rather than the benefit of man." Holiday said with severity, crossing his arms.

Kazuo blinked. Holiday was a very selfish man, after all, so that answer came as no real surprise to him, even though anti-Pokemon sentiment was something of a rarity these days. He wondered if Holiday was from a very old family that had ingrained the strong ideas of superiority and elitism he seemed to posses, by way of specialist ideal. "Are you a separatist?" Kazuo blurted.

Holiday seemed confused. "What? No! I thought we went over this?" The idea itself was foolish. Humans couldn't get by without Pokemon, and that much should have been obvious to anybody. If the PLF actually saw their belief that Pokemon and Humans segregate from one another brought to fruition, it would mean the collapse of modern society. Pokemon filled roles in the infrastructure of every nation on earth, and those roles were irreplaceable. "I'm not in league with the Pokemon Liberation Front."

"So then, what," Kazuo asked "You're not Anti-Pokemon you're just Pro-human?"

"That's a dumb thing to say." Holiday said with a laugh. "_Pro-human._"

Holiday uncrossed his arms, and made an obsequious gesture, as if to suggest that the notion itself was painfully deluded. "But if that's the way you put it, then sure. I just understand that things are the way they are for a reason."

"And that is?"

"Humans use Pokemon as tools." Holiday said. "Plain and simple."

"Not companions?"

"Some people name and personify their inanimate possessions, right?" He thumbed over his shoulder to indicate the man they'd left behind in the foyer at the opposite end of the hall. "He probably has a name for that jack-hammer, same as he has a name for his Drilbur."

"So the fact that they're living and conscious makes no difference."

"It does, I suppose, but it still doesn't change the reality of it." Holiday explained. The fact that a tool could walk talk and act of its own accord hardly made it something else. "What, are we arguing ethics, now?"

"If we are?"

"You ask more questions than Doc." Holiday said with disdain. When the questioning look did not relent, he sighed. "I liked you better when you had a gun in my face."

"That can be arranged."

Holiday sagged hard, like a teenager forced to choose between admitting the truth or being grounded. "If we are arguing ethics, it seems a little hypocritical."

"I'm asking you if that's how you really feel about Pokemon" Kazuo asked. "Just as tools? Nothing else?"

"What's it matter?"

Kazuo looked back blankly, and then shrugged. "I just don't want to find out later there's some agenda here."

It was Holiday's turn to shrug. "I don't care about Pokemon, if that's what you're asking me. I don't get all soaking wet at the thought of being best friends forever with a Pokemon, but I don't hate Pokemon, either. They're useful. Some of them are a lot stronger than us. It makes sense to have them around."

"And that's the way it really is?" Kazuo asked. "Everyone just uses Pokemon, because they're opportunistic, like you?"

"No need to sound so surprised at human nature. It's not just Pokemon we use that way." Holiday said acridly. "Getting all the use you can out of something is the logical nature of the world. That's why you use me, right?"

Holiday thought perhaps that he'd bitten Kazuo with the logic counter, but his silence was more a contemplative one. Outwardly, he chose to ignore the snipe. "Can't be any different? What about all the people who befriend their Pokemon?"

"I don't think that really has much bearing on the end result. " Holiday snorted. Even if you were friends with a tool, you still used it like one. "Look, if it was supposed to be any different, then it would be. Pokemon have the power to rise up and fight back against the system any time they like, but they don't, because their average IQ is about as high as a well-trained refrigerator door."

Kazuo nodded, but didn't offer comment. He just made an allowing gesture, to say that Holiday was free to get back to work. Or at least, to supervising any actual work that was going on.

"Finally." Holiday groaned, as he turned away, not bothering to be quiet enough to go unheard. "It's like havin' a fucking ex-girlfriend for a boss." Holiday adopted a whining tone as he dissappeared behind the heavy door, making sure to adjust the pitch so he could hear himself over the still roaring jack-hammer. "_Why cant it be different? I just want you to change!_" he proclaimed, mockingly.

Kazuo watched his chief engineer leave with a neutral expression. The conversation hadn't destroyed any illusions he'd had about Holiday but it certainly had made the matter of what needed to be done regarding the man absolutely clear to him.

Holiday's views were not directly opposed to his own, after all. He did see people for their potential use to him, and Holiday was also correct in the belief that Humans could not exist as they were now without Pokemon

But where as Holiday believed that the status quo was a permanent fixture of the world, his objective view was that Pokemon, unlike their human counterparts, could _certainly_ go it alone.

More importantly, he knew now that he could not trust Holiday to stand with him against the guest, any more than he could expect the guest to stand with him. And he couldn't expect either of them to do anything but gladly stand over him, if he gave them opportunity.

What he could expect, and what he now intended to do, was walk Holiday right down into his guest's domain, and see what came of it, and do it with a clear conscience. Not that Kazuo would have lost sleep over it otherwise, since he still had his suspicions that the man was a double-agent, but he understood the loss of a good tool just as well as Holiday did. Tools were to be used to their potential after all, but unless he found a way to keep both of them in check, the tool would end up being him in the end.

If he couldn't use them in concert, he would just have to use them against one another.

Holiday stood warily on the other side of the door, his expression a stark contrast to his earlier annoyance. Needless to say, he was more than a little concerned.

The boss had always been a relatively strange fellow, as you'd expect a multi-billionare to be, but he'd always gotten on well enough with the guy. He was intelligent, calculating, and short-spoken. Devious, but in a good way. A bit of a bastard. All the traits he liked in a person, but the point was, he'd always sortof understood the boss, even before he'd met him face to face.

Now, after what had happened yesterday, he wasn't really sure who he was dealing with anymore. Suspicion did funny things to people, he guessed, but he'd somehow expected the boss to be a little more put together than all that. Still, he reminded himself, if the boss had been any more concise, he'd probably have a bullet in his brain-pan right now, so you had to be thankful for the little things.

He decided to get back to work. Maybe once he got down to the Reaction Labs, he'd find something that would make sense of all this, even if he was sure it wouldn't turn out to be quite the earth-shattering revelation Kazuo wanted it to be.

There was one thing he was sure of though: he hated when he didn't understand people. He was supposed to be the confusing one.

* * *

Even though the daylight hours had been on the wane, It ended up being a very long, very tiresome afternoon.

Ash's reservoirs of energy were deep indeed, and once he'd slammed out pushups nearly in the quadruple digits, he was ripped up and onto his feet and set off running, with Surge hot on his heels.

"You too!" Surge shouted, to Pikachu who had tried to remain a bystander. "Move it!"

Pikachu looked apt to refuse the command, until Surge let out his Raichu, and sent it in hot pursuit, flanked by an Elekid, and a Voltik belonging to the two junior instructors.

Pikachu took the sprint better than Ash, though, who's arms and legs were already feeling limp and weak. Ash figured they must've gotten chased around the entire compound twenty times, and it was by no means a small place. Worse yet, there was a big hill on one side, that they kept chasing him up. As a few more electric jolts hit him in the ass, he found himself doing double-time on automatic.

Surge seemed like he'd done this before, though, and though he was sweating profusely, and the moon was high in the night sky, he came trotting into the clear along with two huffing DI's long before he could right himself after a big fall.

He tried to scramble up to his feet, but his legs just wouldn't stay under him.

"Don't bother, Ketchum." Surge said, and he could feel the immense stature of the man towering over him. "It's time for more push-ups anyways," he noted with a laugh.

Ash just gasped, in place of an acknowledgment, and put his hands underneath himself, while trying to straighten out his noodly legs.

Surge crossed his arms, and watched as Ash pushed himself off the ground, and quaked, but did not falter. His brain was numb, and his arms were like jelly, but he managed to get himself propped up to full extension after a few tries. The down-stroke being somewhat more simple, he just tried to keep his face turned to the side so he didn't smash his own nose into the dirt.

"You're not too bright are you, Ketchum?" Surge said to him, kneeling before the prostrate recruit. "It was a little bit heroic at first, but now it's just getting pathetic."

Ash was too exhausted to offer sarcasm on the matter, and instead he just tried to glower as best he could. It proved to be pretty difficult, as sweat ran down into his eyes, and stung them, making him blink and wince. Instead, he just focused on trying to mount another pushup.

"Pikapiii..." He heard his buddy moan beside him, as he managed to push himself up once more, feeling tiny paws wipe dirt and sweat from his cheek.

"Don't worry, buddy." Ash assured, without looking, afraid that his visage alone would prove more upsetting than settling, grimacing with effort as it was. "I'm not going to put you..." He paused to gasp. "Put you—u," the trainer groaned, as he struggled to lift his body, failing to complete his thought, in light of the effort.

"And you!" Surge accused, turning his authoritative glare towards the Pokemon "You should be ashamed of yourself." For good measure, he prodded the electric-type in his soft midsection with a huge finger.

This of course brought looks of sudden confusion from both of the partners, since neither one could imagine how this was Pikachu's fault at all. "Pika?"

"Huh?"

Surge stood, and crossed his arms. "You're the worst Pokemon I think I've ever seen in the corps."

Ash screwed his face up. Clearly this guy was having a lapse of memory. It had been a long time ago, but still, he and pikachu had beaten him and his Pokemon for the Thunderbadge. Before he could direct the massive drill instructor down memory lane, though, Surge went on.

"Only a really miserable Pokemon would make his trainer suffer just so he could satisfy his own ego." Surge snarled, accusingly. "Which is really what this comes down to. The only reason you don't want to go into that poke ball, is because you think you're too good to be put in one."

Pikachu tried to protest, and so did Ash, albeit somewhat breathlessly, but Surge just went on, choosing to completely ignore the trainer, in favor of isolating his Pokemon in the argument. "Because of that, _you're_ the one putting your trainer through this."

He indicated Ash, who was now dragging himself into an upright sitting position, in an effort to better protest the situation. Every noise he made to the contrary of Surge's protesting, though, was drowned out, either by more condescension from the man himself, or by his own heaving breath.

"Only really miserable Pokemon would intentionally force their trainers to suffer for the sake of their own pride." Surge explained, voice full of detest. "Your trainer is too soft to force you, either because he cares too much about you, or because you've always been an awful, terribly trained Pokemon, and he expects no better of you."

"But either way, if you cared about him at all, you'd get into this poke ball" Surge said calmly, and dropped the same poke ball he'd offered Ash earlier to the ground, where it rolled equidistantly between the Pokemon and his trainer.

Pikachu looked at the ball with consternation, and Ash looked at it with somewhat less enthusiasm than that. When his partner glanced up at him questioningly, almost forlornly, Ash felt something in his chest seize up. Sounds bubbled up his throat, but nothing coherent made it up. He sat with his arm extended weakly, shaking his head slowly. He didn't want this. More even, than Pikachu, perhaps.

But Surge had already sown the seeds of doubt in his friend, he could see, and the look of glassy-eyed sadness his partner favored him with, as he slowly ambled over to the stationary poke ball and activated the capture mechanism of his own volition pained him greatly. Ash cursed his own weakness, for not being able to show more conviction in light of his extreme fatigue, for the sake of his friend.

The total defeat evident for and in his best friend, as the red light swallowed him up, and the ball wobbled slowly to it's inert state hurt him profoundly. Gouged at him in a way that was wholly agonizing to him. He reached out to the poke ball in the dirt, wanting to say something contrary, but knowing that it was too late.

He didn't even want to take it into his hands, for fear that doing so would seem too much like accepting this. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, after all. Pikachu was his most trusted friend, and his closest ally, and in turn, Pikachu was entitled to his reciprocation of that trust and friendship. From the first day they had met, Pikachu had shown his disdain for poke balls, and Ash had come to agree that both of them were far better served if his furry yellow friend was not obligated to reside in one. And so it had gone, and so it had stayed, for years now.

That last glimpse of Pikachu stuck itself under his eyelids, following him even as he screwed them shut. That look of guilt, that look of utter resignation. Pikachu wasn't supposed to feel guilty. Pikachu was supposed to have a choice. And some how, he'd fucked that up for both of them.

The poke ball he finally managed to grasp in his enervated fingertips seemed so much a violation of that. He wanted to scream out, either to condemn Surge, or to beg forgiveness from his friend, but his mouth was too dry, and his head too fuzzy with fatigue to even manage it. He let his hand fall back to the dirt, still grasping the ball, and hung his head.

"Now, are we done with all this stupid shit, Ketchum?" Surge asked, towering immensely in the moonlight.

Ash didn't bother to look up, abjectly defeated, and sick to his stomach with guilt. "Yes sir."

The next day, Ash woke up hoping to linger in bed long enough to be the last one out the door, but none of the D. I.s were having that nonsense, and he was promptly pulled, shoved and shouted into some semblance of order, as he went about the flurried motion of tucking in his bunk, and getting his fatigues on.

He still managed to be the last one out, but he was stopped at the barracks door by a powerful, enormous hand across the chest that blocked his way out. He craned his neck back to look at Surge. Ash, foolishly, thought for a moment that he was going to make a concession, have a change of heart perhaps, at least over the matter of Pikachu. He wasn't though.

"Ketchum, you'll fall in with Echo Squad for morning drills. That's Iuakea, Koano, Aiuwaihu, and-"

"Me, unfortunately." a deep, slightly nasal voice said, from around the corner, and as a large, broad-shouldered figure rolled off of from the side into the threshold of the doorway. It occurred to him to suddenly that the Lieutenant had been listing off names, rather than slipping into another spoken tongue as he suspected, but the realization lasted only as long as it took the knee-jerk fury he felt churn his guts up at the sight of Doc, who had apparently been waiting to tail him to the mess. Probably to get a few pot-shots in over his punishment.

The fact that Doc looked as bothered as him over the realization that they would be stuck together did little to soothe him, as Surge ordered them both to get a move on, and shoved them out onto the grounds of the compound. Ash didn't say a word to Doc as he muscled his way past, and he kept his eyes to the ground while he made his way to the mess hall.

Doc didn't bother to follow him anyways. He needed to think. He wasn't sure how this was going to fit with his overall plan. He was sure he could still find a way to make this work, but it wasn't like he was an NCO or anything. He wasn't going to be able to order Ash around just because they were in the same squad. Even if this didn't interfere with his plans to humiliate and defeat Ash directly, he was hardly going to be able to compete with Ash in any real capacity this way, though, since as a squad, their objectives would essentially be the same.

...Holiday would probably know what to do though, right?

He didn't exactly want to come crawling to Holiday for assistance, but maybe if he broached the matter casually, Holiday would give him an idea without even realizing he was being called upon to help. That was for the best really, since he imagined that if Holiday knew exactly what was going on, he would condemn the whole thing.

He slunk away to go find a quiet spot to make a private phone-call on his x-transceiver.

Ash had already found his way through the line, and was trotting back towards a table in the far corner, feeling sorry for himself, since he figured it was the designated zone, what with five others already sitting at a nearby table, looking glum, as they sat without trays in front of them. He realized though, as he made for it, that someone was watching him, and making a not so hidden attempt to intercept him. He was still surprised when he saw her standing there in her green-gray fatigues, with an inquisitive look on her face, like she was slowly coming to the same realization that he was; they knew each other from somewhere. He felt like he was getting so used to unpleasant surprises, that he'd automatically expected to follow those black boots from the floor all the way up to the face of someone he loathed.

He searched his mind for where he'd seen that face before. The name-patch under her lapel was no real help, at least not in identifying her personally. It did pinpoint her as Echo squad, though, so that meant that they'd be _getting_ to know each other, if nothing else.. It was just some long, open-vowel, islander surname that he couldn't even begin to pronounce. He was positive he knew her, though, not in the same way he'd thought he recognized Giselle- though she was kindof pretty too, with her bright Seviian eyes and her dark, reddish-brown hair, that was still visible even bunned under her cover.

"Hero-boy?"

He screwed his face up. "Melody?"

Yep, that was Melody alright. He could almost see her in that white shawl-dress, and orange headband, dancing wildly, as she strode towards him. Then he felt a little awkward rush all of a sudden, as he realized that she was storming him and looked like she was about to hug him. The last female acquaintance he'd bumped into out of the blue had come on to him, just to use him after all, and with things going the way they were, he wasn't exactly expecting Melody to be the lone ray of sunshine here. He quickly made a note of extending his hand, to offer a handshake instead, a little ashamed that he was being so openly pessimistic, but not nearly enough to do otherwise.

The movement felt overly awkward, and for a moment, he was almost positive she would just crash through it, and embrace him anyways, but she didn't. She stopped at the last minute and shook his hand eagerly. Perhaps a little harder than he'd expected, and he was nearly pulled into a hunch by her vigorous motion.

"Wow, it's great to see you again, Ash!" she said with earnest satisfaction, "I almost didn't recognize you without all that frizzy hair! C'mon, let's go sit down."

He remained staunchly silent as he followed her to an unoccupied table, since what he'd first wanted to say that she was hard to recognize too without trying to remember what she looked like bowing down on the ground before him. Since that _hardly_ seemed like an appropriate thing to say, he wisely kept his mouth shut on the matter. It was a really vivid memory of his, though. The ceremony on Shamuti island had just seemed so surreal and exciting that he couldn't help but get caught up in it. That, and Melody had kissed him- the first time anyone had ever kissed him aside from his mom. He forcibly willed a blush not to come to his face.

"Are your friends around—hey whadabout your girlfriend, uh, Mitzy? Missy? I sure would like to see her again!" Melody said with a conspiratorial laugh, scanning around the barracks as they took seats at the bench-table he'd been approaching.

"Misty." Ash said, if only out of courtesy before being quick to add, "Just my friend."

_Misty. _He shook his head deliberately. Why did so many people think that? Granted, some people had confused him and May for slightly more than friends and even Dawn once or twice, but almost everyone who saw him and Misty together thought they were an item. He was beginning to find it repugnant. _Gross._

Melody just made a face at him like he was being a spoil-sport. Although, maybe it was more like disappointment. "Guess she never got it figured out," she muttered under her breath.

"They're not with me, right now." Ash said, ending her search, and though she did seem a little put out by that answer, he was sure she didn't feel nearly as crappy about it as he did. He decided that since he didn't really want to go into too much detail on how he'd actually ended up here, that he'd just be general about it, and try to keep the conversation focused on her. " Well, Pallet's a ways away but, Shamuti island is a _long_ way out there. How come you're so far from home?"

"What, a girl can't get around?" Melody replied cockily.

Ash shrugged, though, hardly caring to start an argument. He loaded up three cubed, fried potatoes onto his fork. "Doesn't seem like much of a vacation spot, is what I'm saying," he explained, rolling his utensil around conjecturally. There had to be a good reason, right? He couldn't imagine anyone submitting themselves to this because they thought it would be good for a laugh, except Doc maybe, but he hardly seemed like an acceptable model for decision-making.

Melody's face tightened up a bit, and she seemed to fall back on her haunches, cut to the quick by his observation. "The Shamuti Island Civic Council sent me. Me and two others." She pointed with her whole hand in a knife-like motion that she had been forced into adopting since yesterday towards two tall, lean guys a little older than he was, sitting at the other side of the mess. He thought it was a little strange that they weren't sitting together, but then again, Doc was technically Echo, too, and apparently wasn't going to eat with them- something that Ash was hardly going to complain about.

He blinked, though, when he came back to the conversation. "For what?"

"This whole PLF threat thing, I guess."

Ash blinked several more times. He guessed he had heard about it in passing a few times, but he didn't really think there was a whole lot to it. It seemed sortof hard for him to believe that there actually were people who thought people and Pokemon should be kept separate. He had a momentary lapse of anger when he thought about how personal that issue actually was, and he glared down contemptuously at his poke-belt with the thought of Surge on his mind, for just a moment. "Really?" he asked. Most people seemed to either be indifferent towards the news of late, or just thought it was a joke.

"I'm sure it's easy to overlook here on the mainland, but you have to understand: people are scared out on the islands." Melody explained. "If there was trouble out on Shamuti Island, it could take days for any help to arrive by sea- there's a limit to how much stuff you can fly in, you know."

When he looked confused, and a bit skeptical she explained the issue more thoroughly. "Well, say like here, on the mainland: they supposedly tried to blow something up, right?" Ash just nodded. He hadn't paid too close attention to the news report to be honest. "What if they had succeeded, before you caught them?"

Ash didn't really know, but he swallowed hard to clear his mouth of food, before providing his hypothesis. "I guess we'd just fix it." He imagined that she was talking about a building. "Try and make sure it never happened again.

"So all the stuff to fix it, that would come in by truck, right? Concrete? Steel? Plus, you're talking about Viridian City, which is a municipal area of about a quarter million people. Lots of skilled laborers, lots of engineers and logistics people to make everything run smooth, right?"

He guessed that made sense. "Sure," he offered, though honestly, he was losing patience.

"Well, we don't have all of that stuff. Steel has to come from here in Vermillion, or overseas. There are only about 200 people living on Shamuti Island. Engineers have to be flown in, over the course of several months. The sorts of repairs that might be needed could take months! Years, even! We're not exactly an economic power-house out there either, Ash, so you still have to factor in the expense of doing all that." Melody huffed, as though through silence he was making an active argument.

He wasn't sure he understood what this was all about, though, so he scratched the side of his head under his cap. He wondered if now would be an acceptable point to drop out of the discussion. He didn't really have the energy or desire to provide a counterpoint.

"So what if something important got damaged, Ash? Like, say, our desalination plant- I say plant, but it's really more like what you'd think of as a substation around here. What would we do without fresh water? No more water to drink, irrigate, work with, for how long-"

"Is the PLF really that big of a threat? Most people around here don't think it was even them." Ash said, his skepticism not waning in the slightest. He felt a little uncomfortable being bombarded with all this statistical information about some hypothetical dooms-day scenario.

Melody sighed in the face of that uncertainty, and she could tell that she might've went overboard. "Well, I guess that's _possible._" She looked embarrassed, picking up on his growing look of annoyance.

Ash waved it off, but offered no other comment as he stirred the eggs around a bit on his plate, before taking in another mouthful.

"But really, whether they're actually that big of a threat or not, isn't the issue. People on Shamuti Island would feel a lot safer if there were people around who were trained to protect them and their Pokemon, even if we never have to." Melody explained, evidently too incensed on the subject to let it go.

"And it's _your _job to do that?" Ash asked, with pointed sigh, visibly quite aggravated.

"That sounds a little condescending." Melody said, obviously insulted. "Why, am I not who you would have picked for the job? Gotta be a big tough _guy_ like you to protect people?" She narrowed her eyes. "You know, I never said anything back them, but you did sortof have a _big head_ about things. Guess you haven't changed much either!"

Ash took a moment of pause then, before putting a hand over his face. He was still in a foul mood, and he was letting his temper get the best of him. He forced himself to speak up, as he heard her rise from the table. "Sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound that way," he offered, apologetically, and with sincerity. "I meant, like, do you work for the civilian...civil, whatever? Or did they just ask you to come here?"

Melody looked quite embarrassed again, as she slowly lowered herself back into the seat. "Er-uh... Yes. Well, no. Yes and no," she fumbled. "I _want_ to, you see. Probably, all three of us want to, some day. The Civic Council makes all of the important decisions on the island, and it's important that we all do our part to help, so when the Council asked around for people who would be willing to go..."

"You volunteered." Ash assumed.

"Yeah." Melody said, confidently. "We do things a special way on Shamuti island, and we have a lot of customs to protect and honor, so we're a very close community. The Civic Council helps protect those traditions- traditions my family has carried out for a long, long time now, so I have a lot of respect of them. I'd like to think I was doing my part for the Island, as well. Anything that helps the community stay strong is important work, even if it does turn out to be paranoia."

Ash nodded. He wasn't sure he could really empathize with that sentiment; as far as he knew, the only cultural tradition that Pallet Town had was the annual Bake Sale, which he had a less than enthusiastic opinion about, mostly because he hated anise cookies. He was certain that he could respect that, though. He'd really enjoyed the culture on Shamuti Island. It hadn't felt tacky, or lame, or phony in any way, like it could in some places where tourism was a huge part of the community. It had felt real- hell, it had _been_ real, but more than that, it had made him feel really important. It had felt...

He angrily forced that blush to go away again.

He wondered if he would've stepped up to the defense of Pallet, if they felt that their way of life was in danger. Probably not. The PLF could have all the anise cookies they wanted, as far as he was concerned. He supposed that if nothing else he would've done whatever it took to make his Mom feel comfortable. He doubted that his Mother would've asked him to join the Pokemon Corps, though.

_It's not like she has much choice now, does she?_

"You're really brave." Ash said, pretty much without thinking about it, because Ash usually told the truth how he saw it, and that was what he saw. "And really..." he pondered the right word, as he polished off a piece of biscuit. "Unselfish." He imagined that there was a ten-pokedollar word there that he didn't know, which would've been much better placed. He meant it though, even if it was poorly articulated.

Melody wished for her own blush to leave, but was less good at it. "I..." She drooped her head down low, in a very traditional Orange Islander-style bow. "Thank you. I'm sorry." When she stood back up, she was rubbing the side of her head in embarrassment "I didn't mean to go off on you before, it's just... some people on the island gave me a hard time for this...Because I'm a girl, you know." Melody smirked, though it seemed a little sadly. "My sister Carol told me I was crazy for wanting to come here."

Ash didn't think so. He thought it was pretty grown up, actually. He wanted to say something of that effect to her, but Surge burst into the far end of the mess along with a couple of other D. I.s and started barking orders for everyone to finish up and fall out, in slightly more colorful phrasing.

"Well, one thing's for sure," Ash promised, as he made ready to leave, nodding in the direction of the fast approaching lieutenant. "You're not gonna have to worry about him treating you differently because you're a girl."

Melody popped her eyes open wide, and rolled them, as if to say, _yeah, tell me about it._

* * *

"_And Paul's Torterra takes another big hit from Togekiss!" _the voice of the announcer buzzed, even over the flat-screen television. She guessed it was because satellite reception way out here in the archipelago wasn't the greatest. _"Ooh, it's not looking good for the challenger!"_

The seven of them were sitting around in the training complex's well-appointed cafeteria. Ritchie, to her immediate left was shoveling food down his throat, without even looking at it.. He had half a sausage-link sitting on the end of his fork, and was staring at the television as he robotically chewed the other half of it like he was only able to do either by the good grace of Arceus.

He was tired. He had to be. She knew he had to be, because she was. She had fallen asleep last night, mentally and physically spent.

They had fully exhausted themselves yesterday. She had battled so hard, that she wasn't sure she could even remember her basic type-tables, much less stand up and do it again. She had faced off against Koga and nearly ground him down to defeat, after almost six grueling hours, only for him to mount a comeback with his Swallot by badly poisoning her Durant. Ritchie had battled against both Lorelei and Bruno, so she knew he had to be at least as worn out as her. She'd heard he'd come within a hairs breadth of taking Lorelei to a draw, though, with some pretty meticulous use of his Charizard, Zippo.

She'd believed that the Unovan elite four were strong, just based on hearsay, when she'd competed in her regional tournament. But now, having actually gone toe-to-toe with an official league Elite, she had to say, she was humbled. Truly humbled, as she glanced around the table, and saw them all take in a light breakfast; fruit, toast, even tea, some of them, while sharing small-talk, unlike her and Ritchie who were hoovering down fatty, starchy foods in silence, to convert it into the desperately needed chemical energy, and not so much watching television, as staring through it, and trying to keep their utensils moving at the end of lethargic limbs.

"I don't think he's got much of a chance." Lorelei said, offering up what was obviously the unspoken majority opinion.

"Cynthia is probably the strongest champion Sinnoh has ever had." Agatha said, as if to provide the obvious explanation.

"Paul planned well against her lead, but she's a very balanced trainer. A lot of trainers make the mistake of underestimating her other Pokemon because her Garchomp is so strong." Bruno noted.

"I think the challenger has done quite well to even make it this far." Koga stated, very quietly, but very firmly. "An elite challenge is a herculean effort in and of itself. To have such a good showing against the Champion, on your first attempt is impressive."

Lance nodded, looking at the television with the expression of a man who was sizing up a potential opponent. "I agree."

Ritchie piped up, evidently confused. He had to stop himself, at first, though, to keep a lump of over-chewed sausage from plopping out of his mouth, but once he swallowed, he managed it. "Doesn't look like he's doing so bad to me. It's only one to one so far. Why's everybody talking like he's lost already?

Lorelei chuckled, which seemed to irk him a bit. Uranium figured he was still a little sour about not being able to eek out a win against her. "Yeah, it's one to one, but now Paul only has one Pokemon left, hon."

Ritchie's face screwed up. "He went into the championship challenge match with a handicap?"

Uranium cut across him. "She means that Paul lost those Pokemon during his elite challenge."

Ritchie still seemed confused though, and by expression alone, he prompted Lance to explain further.

"And Elite Challenge is a one-shot deal," he said. "You have to take the whole thing in one go, to claim champion rights."

Ritchie seemed to get it, then. "So wait, you have to battle all four elite, and then the champion without stopping?"

Koga and Agatha nodded. "That's what makes it an Elite challenge."

"No breaks." Bruno said.

"No breathers." Lorelei added.

Ritchie looked like he was mulling that over. Paul had essentially had to defeat four of the strongest trainers in the world, without healing or resting any of his Pokemon, before they'd even let him take a shot at Cynthia, who was, as he had always heard it, one of the most talented and relentless attackers amongst the regional champions. He had to admit that he agreed with Koga, that the feat was impressive, especially in the way that Paul had so handily dealt with Cynthia's Garchomp. Still, it didn't seem very sporting. "Isn't that a little unfair?"

Uranium stepped in, then, feeling that she had to speak in the defense of her idol. "It's a champions right to draft any four trainers he chooses to help him defend the title, and it's only reasonable that he pick the strongest trainers to do so."

She'd heard that, a long time ago, Agatha had been in contention for the title herself. Bruno and Lorelei, like Koga, had once been gym-leaders, and well above average ones at that.

"Because when you take on the elite challenge, you're not just facing off against the person who holds the title. You're battling for the right to step into the legacy left behind by some of the greatest trainers ever to step onto the field. The Champion has a lot of responsibility, and not just to the league. How long could they be expected to fulfill those responsibilities, if the title came into question every time they held a poke ball in their hands? Inevitably, there would be a new league champion every week, and league policy would change too erratically to manage." she said, pragmatically. The way she saw it, that was simply the way one found themselves in contention. If it was tough, oh well. That was what was required to earn the right to challenge the champion.

Agatha nodded her approval. "That's exactly right." She seemed like she was speaking from experience. Uranium figured she must've remembered the days before she the league had implemented the Elite program.

Lance nodded his agreement, as well. "You're right about one thing, though, Ritchie. Paul hasn't necessarily lost," he began with a smile, but Lorelei interjected.

"Actually, I think he just bought it."

Uranium could see Ritchie wince as, sure enough, Togekiss finished off Paul's Torterra, who'd honestly been at a bad type-disadvantage, and been barely holding on as it was, with a flourishing Sky Attack. Torterra, even as massive as it was, was flipped onto it's back, and had not the strength to right itself. The match was called, and Cynthia was announced the victor, and still champion.

Lance didn't seem put off of his explanation, though. "You'll see that Paul has accomplished something worth being really proud of, even if he didn't overturn Cynthia." He pointed towards the purple-haired challenger. "You're going to be seeing that face a lot, trust me."

Uranium understood what he was talking about. "I think this is the first time anyone has even made it through the elite four to challenge a champion in, what?"

"Eight years," Agatha explained. "When Lance took the challenge for the fourth time."

Ritchie blinked. "You had to take the challenge four times to become champion?"

He would've gone on to explain how impossible that seemed, to win the regional tournament, challenge the elite four, and walk away empty-handed, not just once, but three times. Uranium's elbow collided with his ribcage, though, evidently none too happy about his seemingly snarky comment.

Lance shook his head. "I had to take the challenge four times just to make it to the championship round! I didn't even win, then," he remarked. "I didn't become champion until a year later when Red abdicated the title." Drawing into reference one of the peerless greats of the sport caught Ritchie's attention.

He glanced to Uranium, and rubbed his side. She seemed to already be privy to that little factoid. "But, even taking the challenge at all garners a lot of attention." Uranium noted, providing auxiliary explanation. "Lance was a favorite to become Champion, and so naturally, when Red retired, Lance was awarded the title, instead of it defaulting to the previous champion."

Lance nodded, modestly. "I see you've followed my career."

Ritchie tried not to laugh when Uranium turned scarlet, and suddenly became very interested in her breakfast again. knowing that it would just get him another jab in the ribs. "So, then, you think something good will happen for Paul?" he asked.

Lance nodded, and so did everyone else. "Oh yes," the champ agreed. "I'm sure the League will hurry to find a place for him. He's done remarkably well."

Agatha let out a surprising yawn. "I hope that wherever they put him, it frees someone up to come and take over the Viridian Gym," she said. "I can't be expected to keep up with you young people _and_ run that place forever."

Everyone had a good laugh, then, but Uranium and Ritchie found out later that morning, that Agatha was not nearly as worn out as she made herself sound. She promptly whipped both of them up one side of the battlefield and down the other, making no mystery at all of why the two rookie trainers had faced off against the other three Elites yesterday, while she and Lance had battled exclusively with each other.

* * *

Surge shouted, above what was essentially a din of silence. "Then, you will move across the balance beams on the far side. Following completion of that obstacle, you will cross under the barbed wire, and continue northward, on your stomach until reaching the barricade, at which point-" the LT pointed across the stretch of open ground to the barricades, which were in actuality, seven meter high stacks of logs, held vertical by two steel beams, with ropes dangling from either side.

"You will mount the barricades, and repel down the rear side. There will be no fast-roping, and no-hand over-hand, is that understood?..." Surge had been going on and on, listing all the multitude of obstacles as they went on, ad nauseum, with them shouting, "Yes sir!" every so often for his benefit. Melody found herself leaning slightly to the side and whispering to Ash all of the small details he had missed from the previous afternoon, having been removed from the rest of the recruits on account of his refusal to ball up his Pikachu.

"The course itself isn't too hard. Might be a little more tricky with only one Pokemon, but really you just gotta worry about making sure you're not the last one to cross the end marker."

Expecting Ash to ask her why, she remained leaned over slightly, in preparation to explain. Ash wasn't really listening to her, though. He was lost in his own thought, and only very briefly glanced her way when a watchful DI surged into the line, and jerked her straight up into a rigidly erect pose, having caught her leaning his way. "You'll have to talk to your boyfriend a little later, sweetheart." the man drawled sarcastically, in such a way that gave Melody the suspicion that the insult was intended for a male recipient rather than a female, as it would be a lot more humiliating that way.

Ash wasn't listening, though. It was just about all he could do to keep paying attention to Surge's description of the rest of the course as he stood behind ant to the left of Doc, in rank. As he stood there, glaring a hole through the back of the fatigue cap on his sudden and imminently loathed adversary's head, he felt his heart rate swell and rise to a crescendo that made his blood feel like it was slamming in and out of his arteries like a piston.

He was angry. So angry. All he knew was that this was Doc'_s_ fault. This was _all_ his fault. Being stuck here. Pikachu being forced into a ball, all of it. It was all because of him!

Which wasn't exactly to say that Ash was not focused on the field, as he most certainly was. It was after all the most immediate way for him to pay back his adversary for what had befallen him. He would crush Doc, just as he had promised. He would make him look foolish, just as he had promised. It didn't matter if doc could outrun him. It didn't matter if doc could outperform him in every physical capacity. Ash was going to win. There was not a single fiber of his being that was not dedicated to the task. If he had to run until his legs fell off, if he had to climb until his hands bled, and crawl on his face until his knees and elbows wore to the bone, he would do it. He would have traded his soul right at that moment to make sure that he was the first one across that line.

"Today, you will take only one Pokemon through the course with with you!"

He didn't feel all of his muscles contract, harden almost painfully with the raising of the starting gun. He didn't feel himself catapult forward like a coiled Arbok, springing past the two ranks of trainees in front of him in a single Deerling-like stride. He didn't even realize that he'd taken a swift and lengthy lead, knifing furiously between the two blocking ranks of trainees in front of him.

The first obstacle was a low set of three logs set on upright posts that didn't look like they would present too much of a challenge to him. He had a long list of physical accomplishments under his belt, after all. Certainly no shortage of running, jumping, and climbing, at the very least.

By this point, the Pokemon were appearing all around him, some making up the lost ground on longer legs, with faster strides, others being thrown far by their trainers before emerging in streaks of light right before him. He tried to think of a logical choice for a Pokemon to come along with him, through the obstacles.

He needed a fast, relatively versatile Pokemon, that could jump and climb alongside him, but that would be small enough to make it through the obstacles. That meant that right off the bat, three of his Pokemon were out. Charizard and Snorlax were too big, and while Tauros was less so, he certainly didn't think that the bull Pokemon would be climbing up any ladders, or crawling under barbed-wire.

That left Bulbasaur, Pikachu, and Psyduck. Discounting Psyduck immediately, for obvious reasons, and unsure if he could really stand to look Pikachu in the eyes, much less order him around an obstacle course, he fumbled for Bulbasaur's poke ball and likewise threw it before himself, aiming for the base of the obstacle. Bulbasaur would already have Vine Whipped his way to the 3rd log by the time he got there.

And Ash was sure that would've been the case, had Bulbasaur actually appeared there.

"Oh, come ON!" Ash snarled, as he scooped Psyduck up mid-stride, the deranged Pokemon making for the side of the obstacle course, without direction. He tried not to slow down too much, bet even in the two or three stutter steps he took he could hear the loud thudding of boots behind his back.

He took the first log in the biggest dead- leap he could muster, managing to put a sole on it, and propel himself over. Without the use of both arms to keep his balance, he dared not take a flying leap over the next one, which was higher. He planted a hand and used it to give himself a boost over it, swinging his lower body over with his built up momentum. He knew the third would prove the hardest of all, and so he just charged it, vaulted, and let himself collide with it at the midsection, rolling himself over it sidelong, and hoping desperately that he would come down on his feet, with Psyduck still bundled up in his arms.

He did, luckily enough, but it was just in time to see Doc and his Jolteon bound to the ground, Doc having evidently sprang from each log to the next, and his Jolteon, evidently having very good poise and balance, having very little trouble doing the same, in spite of it's quadrupedal locomotion.

Fire lit up in his periphery. He dove forward, out of sheer anger, if nothing else, surpassing his adversary once again, tucking Psyduck under his arm like a football, and rampaging forward.

The course led into a fortified trench, which ran deeper than he was tall, and had a kindof scaffolding over top it. As he plowed ahead into it, with only Jolteon and one other Pokemon in front of him, he was nearly running too fast to realize that there were niches build into the fortifications to either side of the main corridor. He felt something heavy cut the air behind him, and in the second he spared to turn and look, thinking that Doc had taken a flying leap at him, another such object collided with him, and sent him sprawling to the dirt.

There was a drill instructor on him, then, evidently torn between laughing at him, and telling him off for not watching where he was going. He realized, as he was jerked to his feet and shoved back out into the corridor, some five or six places behind the lead, that he should have paid closer attention to Surge's description of the field. The niches to either side, were actually sloped trenches, where heavy sand-bags were swung back and forth from the rigging overhead, much to the detriment of passing trainees.

He took up the sprint again, relying more of sheer tenacity and dumb luck than any sense of timing, blowing past a group of three trainees who were trying to time their dash ahead just right, so that a DI who was evidently holding his shot for just the right moment, could not bowl them over with a well timed shove. The instructor let fly, of course, but Ash was long gone. He felt a little guilty as he heard at least two of the trainees struggling to get back to their feet after being bowled over by the sandbag meant for him, but he could hardly process that, on top of all the muddled emotions he already felt. He just grit his teeth and hurdled another trainee and her downed Hoppip, determined to regain his lost ground.

He cleared the ditch and made his way to the next obstacle, which was a set of balance beams, that seemed to stretch on way too far and far too high over a narrow most likely man-made creek; even farther and higher it seemed, with one arm he might've used to keep his balance compromised cradling Psyduck. He tried not to give it so much thought, as he mounted the beam.

He pushed himself onward, though, when he caught sight of Doc coming off on the opposite side as though he'd taken the beam at a full run. He tried his best to do the same, but the beam proved just a little too uneven and he was forced to come to a halt after nearly turning a pirouette, in an effort to keep his balance.

He tried his best to centralize Psyduck's weight, and the fowl quacked plaintively, as he was brought face to face again. "Yeah? Well, I'm not happy either." He conceded, and took the rest of the beam in six long, teetering strides. Annoyed at the setback, he flipped Psyduck up onto his shoulders, and threw himself forward wildly again, taking up a breakneck pace, showing furious determination that few could match.

Behind him, Melody, who was leading the remainder of their squad took her first tentative steps onto the beam, stopped cold by a sudden slip. Her Wingull was there to catch her by the collar and give her just the nudge she needed to prevent herself from falling, but for some reason she just couldn't get her footing back underneath herself on the slick wooden beam.

"C'mon, Mel! You're gonna make us fall behind," came a complaint from her heels

"Yeah,why didn'y you just have Wingull carry you over?" came another.

She wanted to shout back that Wingull wasn't strong enough to carry her over anything, and to shut their big fat mouths, but she was too busy trying to retain her footing. In a brazen display of disregard, Koano somehow stepped past her on the beam, disrupting her balance even further, and emboldening her other detractor as he ran on ahead.

"You should've stayed home, Mel." Glen Aiuwaihu said glumly, when she slipped and fell to her stomach, doubled over the beam. "Just hold still."

Melody fumed when he stepped over her as well, and considered for more than a long moment pulling him into the creek, and climbing back to a standing position herself when he offered her a hand. Instead she just shook her head, and diligently did the latter. "I can do it myself."

She heard Glen click his tongue, and run on to catch up with Terry.

Ash didn't think was doing such an amazing job with the barbed wire, actually. With Psyduck in his grasp, he could hardly crawl around on his stomach, without repeatedly grinding Psyduck into the dirt, or exposing him to the sticking prongs of barbed wire above. Left without any real options open to him, he'd taken the low-lying net of wire at a full-charge, and then sprawled into a flat-out slide.

He'd banged his head so hard trying to flatten out against the ground and avoid getting stuck, that he thought for a moment that he might just black out before he could get back up. Anger and frustration forced him back up, though, and he took the next assembly of crisscrossing wire with the same method, sliding this-time, head-first, and angled slightly to the side, to protect Psyduck, which he found was no better a solution.

Rocks had been spread about this section of the course, probably to discourage just such attempts he guessed, and now most of his forearms, and he imagined from the pain in his cheek, were scraped and cut from the slide.

His third sprawl and slide was tempered somewhat by his garnered knowledge from the first two attempts. While this did result in a somewhat less painful result, it was incomplete. He found himself drained of momentum, and stuck precariously beneath the poking wires, positioned awkwardly, and with another four feet or so of wire left to clear. With a grumble, he extricated Psyduck, and let the water-type waddle his way out, while he wriggled and squirmed through the dirt and rocks.

When he stood on the other side of the wire, he extracted Psyduck, who had hopelessly snagged himself by that time, true to typical form, and set off in a sprint, knowing he'd lost precious time.

In spite of that, Ash had made up some good distance, when he came to the climbing wall. He didn't feel the slightest bit upset by it's height. He was a very good climber. He still remembered climbing the mountain on Navel Island, and that was as high and steep as any mountain in Kanto. He'd be up and over this sucker so fast it'd make Doc's head spin. Of course the sight of Doc already well on his way to being over the wall only made him more adamant. "Hold on," he urged Psyduck, who seemed at least capable and willing to do that.

He tore up the wall with amazing alacrity, Psyduck gripping his head desperately, his path cut less out of concern for logical footholds, and grip, and more of an inexorable desire to ascend. Unbeknownst to Ash few of the DI's who were watching at the base of the wall looked on with hanging jaws, as he, using nothing but a double-handed grip on a single textured nodule literally threw himself straight up to the next one without any foothold of which to speak, with only a roar of defiance, and a scramble to continue.

When he made it to the top he was just behind Doc who was on his way down, rope wrapped expertly around his leg, as he repelled downward, toward his awaiting Jolteon. On a rope to the far left. Ash snarled, and leapt for the rope in front of him.

He didn't have time for that crap.

Psyduck wailed as the free-fell for several breath-taking moments, until Ash finally caught a grip on the rope. Nothing extremely positive came of it, though, as his outward and downward momentum became a inward swing ending in a harsh impact with the wall itself. Ash turned enough to keep Psyduck from taking the hit, and absorbed enough of it with his flank and shoulder that it didn't injure him, but it did jar his grip from the rope and he plummeted the last fifteen feet.

He bent at the knees when he landed, but since he couldn't tumble forward with Psyduck on his shoulders, all the shock of the landing stayed in his legs. The pain wasn't terrible at first, but as he took up a sprint again, Ash realized how much he'd hurt himself. He didn't let that stop him, though. The adrenaline of having stolen back the lead drove him on, along side his anger, and with only a straight run separating him from the finish, he knew he could win this easily.

But as he sped onward, he heard those thumping sounds behind himself again, and sure enough, a needle-furred Jolteon shot past him like a lightning-bolt, letting him know that Doc was on his tail.

"You're not pacing yourself well." Doc said, as if stating an obvious fact. "Aren't you getting tired?"

Ash said nothing, and lowered his head, throwing his body forward and willing his legs to catch it. And he did pull away then, at least at first. The burst of speed proved to be temporary, though, as Doc was soon beside him, sprinting flat out, as they scrambled to the finish, which was in sight.

_No!_ Ash screamed, mentally, desperately denying what was happening. He had to win! He had to!

The sound of his heartbeat returned then, in his ears, overwhelming the sounds of their thumping boots, and his own heaving breath. Just the sound of his heartbeat remained, pulsing fast, and pulsing hard. Just his pounding, panic-stricken heart. A heart which Ash was sure, _so sure_, would break if he didn't cross that line before Doc.

So perhaps it was more an act of self-preservation and fear than of true avarice, when he shouted back at his adversary. "Pace this!"

And Ash, if he had been running before, now practically flew. He closed his eyes and poured it on from somewhere deep within him. Physically, he was trembling with the effort, but he was just barely aware of anything at all, beyond the ground in front of him, outside of the staccato thudding of his own heart.

The next thing he knew, he really was flying, as he dove forward, and held Psyduck up out in front of him, lengthening his reach artificially as though for a photo-finish, the water-type quacking wildly. He tucked Psyduck in at the last moment and rolled head over heels to a stop, and as much as he wanted to, as much as he hurt all over, he didn't linger, but instead turned to see if he'd really managed it, his lungs refusing to draw breath until he knew for sure. His heart missed a beat or two, but sure enough, it remained intact, as he saw that Doc hadn't even crossed the finish line yet.

He felt the whoop of self-congratulation catch in his throat though, and turn itself into an incredulous "Huh?" as Doc slowed to a complete stop just a few feet before the finish line. Doc didn't even seem all that upset, either. In fact, he was smiling. He stepped to the side and let a few other trainees pass him, even.

Nearly all of the instructors at the checkpoint were screaming at him to cross the line, to finish the course, but he didn't budge, even when they came over and tried to shove him through, all the while with a self-satisfied sneer in Ash's direction.

The remainder of Echo gathered around, as more and more trainees came huffing across the line.

"What's going on?" Glen asked, towering over the seated Ash, even hunched with fatigue as he was.

"I dunno." Ash said between his own gasps for air.

"What the heck is he doing?" Terry inquired, his voice twinged with panic as even more trainees flooded in.

Ash was about to repeat himself, when Melody spoke up. "Seriously?" she groaned. "That guy was unbelievable yesterday, you should have seen him. He was almost done with the course before any of the Instructors could run around to meet him there."

"Yeah, Surge made him go back and climb the wall all over again. That hard ass was sure the guy had gone around it completely, and since none of the DI s had caught up to him yet, he couldn't prove that he had," Glen added.

"And he still finished before any of us," gasped Terry.

Slowly but surely, the rest of the trainees filtered in, each of them sweating, mud-covered and exhausted. One by one, Doc let them pass him by, with a gentlemanly gesture, down to the very last, before filing in behind them.

Ash, who was quite confused, did nothing, but there was a tremendous outburst from the rest of Echo all around him.

"What?"

"Why?"

"Seriously?"

None of that matched Surges bellow, though, the grizzly drill instructor evidently having seen everything. "Echo Squad," he hollered. "Your Mess Passes are revoked! Because you think you are cute, Private Lancealot," Surge accused, jabbing a meaty fingertip into Doc's neck, and drawing reference to his supposedly civalrous acts, Ash guessed, since the name on the Doc's lapel was far more mundane than the knightly title bestowed, "you and your entire squad will all report to me during meal time for remedial PT, and for every meal following, until either you get your sorry ass in gear, or they kick it in gear for you!"

The flimsy and diminutive forms of the remainder of Echo squad, by comparison to Doc, who did not seem as ridiculously small in Surge's shadow as most everyone else clustered around, made that latter possibility seem unlikely, and while four of five members of the squad molded their faces into looks of utter contempt and disgust, Doc had to keep himself from smirking.

Surge's declaration, of course, had been exactly what he wanted to hear.

As Ash lay in bed later that night, his entire body aching not only from his injuries, but from the nearly two hours of PT Surge had put them all through instead of having dinner, in addition to the already full day of drilling, marching and mind-numbing exercise that had already been planned for them, he wondered how his victory could feel so hollow. He was supposed to feel like he'd won. Like he'd accomplished something. Like he'd defeated Doc. He had, hadn't he?

...Hadn't he?

The snarling of his empty stomach, though it was lessened by comparison to the rest of his discomfort, seemed to fully complete his misery. The dangling belt of poke balls hung before his face from the uprights of the bunk bed, numbering six in all, took that awful punishment one step farther, sending that disparaging look Pikachu had given him, just before being sucked into that sixth poke ball flashing back into his memory, and slashing across his heart.

He rolled over and faced the wall, feeling an awful lot like the most miserable fuck up in the world instead of a winner, and tried not to let the sound of his quiet sobbing echo in the silent barracks.

* * *

**A/N:** Could Ash sink any lower? Ouch. Anyways, this one is finally done, and I'm going to set after the next one with turbo-speed, hopefully, given the backlog of creative energy I haven't been able to unleash during this brutally oppressive semester of school. I wish I could say my rapacity for editing has likewise swollen somewhat with it's disuse (which sounds kindof gross, actually) but I'm sure it hasn't.

Anyways, I hope this chapter is well-received and if not, I hope you look forward to hating the next one, too. Ha!


	14. Chapter XIV

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Confused, all alone, emotionally and physically exhausted Ash wonders if he is ever going to find his rhythm again. As Holiday draws closer to his goal, the shadow of Kazuo's suspicion grows ever longer.

A/N: Fuuuuuuuu— yea, I really set after the next one with turbo-speed, huh? Fuckin, last year, and shit. Really, there are a million reasons why. New school. New job. New home. I won't bore you with the details, but either I've been unable to, or unable to find the motivation to get this to you.

Either way, sorry. Here it is. Finally.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter VIX**

"What Separates Us"

Ghetsis stood, flanked, always flanked, by those two lethal figures, their slicked-back hair and cool visage always leering down at him over the shoulders of an already magnanimous figure. It was for that reason, that he always erred on the side of optimism when reporting to the man who had once called himself Plasma King, and was now hushedly referred to as Generalissimo of the Liberation Front, though he formally accepted no title.

Formally, that was. Ein knew the man still acted with the presupposition of a lord, and that, unspoken, it was expected of him to comply with that. Especially by those two who resided behind him. The remnants of the Shadow Triad. Ghetsis' personal aides, enforcers, and spies.

So, playing his part, as he was expected, and truly, as he had come to accept it, Ein bowed politely at the entrance of his employer and liege.

"What news from Orre?" Ghetsis asked, cordially. "Have we acquired Cipher's data on the specimen?

"I've still got a man inside the company. He's reported that he has been assigned to a task force to delve into the lower compound of the facility. That should be where the machine, and the specimen are being held. They're boring their way through." It was all conjectural at this point, Ein knew. Any number of foul-ups could, and would likely result in the mean-time. Still, he did not make that point abundantly clear. He'd learned that, so far in his tenure as a PLF scientist.

Not that Ein felt the need to maintain strict adherence to their code of conduct. He was not truly a separatist. It was just that he understood his position in the structure of the organization. Ein had no trouble at all being a well-paid yes-man. The scientific strides that Ghetsis and the Liberation Front desired were unorthodox, yes, but they were also relatively meager. He'd been hired to hack into Cipher's database, make several line-tapping connections, and data-mine some confidential information, and that was fine with him. As near as he could tell, it was all related to that specimen that Cipher had acquired on Sayda Island, Ein knew, but he also knew, or rather, understood that the find was not within the scientific grasp of anyone currently within the command structure of either Cipher, or the PLF proper, that he was aware of. It was god-stuff, after all. The sort of Promethean discovery that would not and could not be given bearing, except by a truly great mind, the likes of which would only come along once in a few generations. It was bigger than the Mew-cloning experiments, failures all, that Silph Co, and it's subsidiary Team Rocket had tried to keep hush-hush half a decade or so ago. It was potentially a more earth-shattering discovery than the cumulative knowledge of Pokemon, insofar.

The application was the real clincher, though. It would take a mind capable of real, true visionary brilliance to make the discovery mean something, within their lifetime. Like those of Babbage, Descartes, the advent of the knowledge that could be gleaned would be decades, perhaps centuries ahead of its time.

And that was where he would come in. He deplored the applique, truthfully. Theoretic superseded the practical aspects, in most fields, after all. It was generally believed that the comprehension of sciences had far surpassed human ability to manifest it. It was a simple matter of materials, really. In theory, with a material strong and flexible enough, one could lasso the moon, and pull it down to earth. Would technology produce such a material anytime soon? Likely not.

But this discovery was god-stuff, after all. It was just up to him to decide what to do with it.

Rousing him from his thoughts, came the voice of Ghetsis, and the narrowed slit-like eyes of his two henchmen. "Get an updated report."

"R-Right away."

* * *

"Of course it's workin', bro." Holiday told him over the low band-connection he was afforded on the outskirts of the out-of-the-way locale of Pokemon Corps training camp. "i wouldn't have suggested it, if I didn't think it would work." Holiday, of course, had made him see the merits of purposeful defeat, as a preferable alternative to a more orthodox victory, in light of the conditions that Doc had revealed to him, somewhat hesitantly, almost a week previous. "That said, I'm glad I'm not the one doing it."

"You should try it. I've already lost ten pounds," he said mirthfully, though honestly, it was no laughing matter. He likely did not have ten pounds to lose in body-fat, so that weight had to be coming from somewhere and it was likely muscle-mass. Still, he didn't think it would do to let such an opportunity to jab at Holiday's obviously expanding paunch go by.

Holiday didn't bite, though, and instead, sniped back in a more extreme way. "Just try and stay healthy. We don't need another blowout keeping you from sticking with the Kid, here."

The comment shut the other man up promptly, cutting off his laughter without even the slightest difficulty. All Doc could even manage, was to sputter out a confirmation that he would do just that.

Doc sat staring at the xtranceiver for a long time, after Holiday told him that he had to take another important call, and let him go, the word 'blowout' echoing heavily between his ears. A word he'd been running from for nearly the whole year.

He had tried all this time to put it to the back of his mind as much as he could, because honestly, he didn't want to believe it from the very beginning, but also because he'd wanted to keep it close to his chest. He hadn't even told Holiday that was what had happened, and while he wasn't so much surprised that Holiday knew, since Holiday had a way of digging in, especially if he wasn't invited to, it was like a slap to the face, knowing that he seemed to be the only one who hadn't accepted it.

He remembered standing outside the examination room, calmly buttoning his shirt under the combined consultation of Bruno and Joy, his ears deafened to their voices of protest.

"You said yourself that the injury was minor," He'd pointed out, completing the fastening of the garment, and moving on to another.

Joy held up the x-ray. "No, I said that as it stands, the _damage_ is very minor. Its a very serious injury, and you should take it as such," the head nurse corrected, sternly.

Doc turned to Bruno for support instead. "I'm still strong enough to train with you in the mountains."

It was that look that he was always going to remember. That off-handed regard of both uncertainty and disbelief that had said all too clearly that his sensei did not believe that was the case.

"An injury like this could do more than just end your career, Doc. It could drastically effect your quality of life. I think you should take some time off. Rest your shoulder. You can always come with me again next year," Bruno had offered, trying to seem as though he wasn't shunning his pupil.

"My health isn't a concern," Doc had promised, nearly an exclamation, and most assuredly a plea.

He remembered looking into the face of his immense instructor then, who had always been a wellspring of support and guidance and seeing only doubt, where before there had been none.

"Resistance to Injury is part of your overall health, as well. It's something you ought to take into account." The comment had left him standing there, stunned, just like he was now, gripping his fists tightly.

Joy had chose her moment to intercede, as Bruno left the corridor–and him-behind for Mt. Silver. "Fortunately the cuff tear was only minor, and it shouldn't require surgery. But you will need to mind that you don't do any excessive lifting or..."

Doc shook his head, and unclenched his fists. Holiday had already hung up, but still he spoke towards his X-transceiver, before stuffing it back into his fatigue pants. "My health is _not_ an issue."

At the other end of the recently close connection, Holiday glared at the caller ID display on his transceiver, thoroughly dismayed in his own right.

He thought about not answering, especially since his contact was not supposed to call him here, under any circumstances, but he was well aware of what sort of trouble that would cause him later on, and he had been well aware of how urgent the matter had become, once he'd let slip what he would soon have access to.

He hit the receive key, and locked his features into a tightly sewn veil of distant professionalism, as the figure from his past appeared on screen.

"You're not supposed to be calling me." he muttered, with brisk dismay evident on his voice.

"Are you in yet?" his contact plied, ignoring his droll tone.

"Not yet."

"You said you'd be in shortly when I spoke to you yesterday," the figure said, with almost childlike impatience.

"When I said shortly, I meant it in, like, a cosmic sense," Holiday drawled, though he too was hardly pleased at the nearly full week that had elapsed since his time here had begun.

"We need what's in that chamber, Holiday," his contact reminded him. "You as much as me-"

"I know." Holiday offered corrosively, and clapped the receiver shut without so much as another word.

In a cold rage, he sat both of his palms against the nearby wall, and took a moment. As angry as the sudden call had made him, He couldn't even begin to say how much more displeased he was when he turned around and saw that fucking old-ass man, Grayson standing there, at the rounded corner of the hall.

He flinched backward in surprise for a moment, but then regained his candor the very second his balance returned, and spun on the maintenance man who'd been there listening for who knew how long.

It was a hard thing to catch Holiday red-handed. He prepared, and planned, and set up contingencies, and if all else failed, he was very good at covering his own ass. Still, though, those old eyes didn't shift in the face of his sudden irritation.

"The fuck are you looking at?" Holiday snarled.

With one glance, Grayson said all he needed to. The man looked down at his cross-transceiver, back up at him, and then walked sharply away.

It was so imperceptible of a thing, but the sound of his fearful swallow sounded like a death-knell in his ears.

* * *

"I'm so fuckin' hungry."

Ash said nothing, at first. He'd stopped commenting almost all together for the past few days. It seemed relatively pointless, after all. Making a verbal note of how much things sucked, did more to make the situation worse, here, than it did otherwise. He agreed, though, since his stomach too was aching, having long since given up the grumbling and churning of days previous. He was now chiefly tired, when he wasn't outright sore.

He gripped the barricade in front of himself, and pulled himself upward, along with the rest of Echo. Well, all of Echo save Doc, who was far out ahead of him. He didn't say anything as he'd watched his adversary above pull himself over, and begin his roped descent. He didn't even bother to groan aloud with his own effort the effort, as he went along, similar to how everyone else was, knowing that it would just compound his already staggering exhaustion.

"So are all the rest of us, Terry," Ash heard Melody say, a little further behind the rest of them, evidently not caring for the complaint a bit, in light of her own struggles.

"I wish we could just find some berries or something growing around here." Glen commented, but halfheartedly, knowing that even if that were the case, they'd never have enough time away from Surge and the instructors to find any, much less spend the time it would take to pick and consume any from the woods nearby. "Some of us are growing _boys!_" he offered in jab to their female squad-mate.

They'd gone almost a week without food of any kind. Ash, who had never even imagined what that would be like, under the best of conditions, didn't even bother to compare it to his earlier misfortunes on this journey. He just climbed higher. He was hungry, sure. But mostly, he just felt exhaustion. A weakness in his limbs that forced the need to concentrate on what would have been a simple thing for him to do normally, but was now an effort in both physical, and mental aspects. An uncertainty in his grip and a shakiness in his legs that turned this wall, an obstacle he'd roared over on his first day faster than anyone into a daunting, and though he hated to admit it, disconcerting task.

He'd frozen here yesterday, at twenty feet, trembling, frightened and out of any obvious handholds. And here he'd stayed for nearly ten minutes, having the closest thing to a panic attack he'd ever had in his life, too scared to climb up and risk his footing, too scared to come down and lose his grip.

He'd never thought that there was any fear at all inside himself, really, and it had come as a disturbing reminder that this was well outside of his comfort zone. He'd been perfectly at home in some of the most tense battles, and outrageous situations anyone, anywhere had ever been in, and here he was, worried about falling a distance only a little higher than the one he'd willingly dropped from on his first day. Had he really lost that much confidence?

He gripped hard on the outcropping node and forced himself up, just as he'd finally done yesterday, ignoring the upsetting feeling of unbalance and tight clenching fear that welled up because of it. His body was trying to tell him he was too weak and that he was too tired, and that he should not try again until he was in a better state. He refused it, and pushed up with his legs, extending himself so that he could reach the red plastic outcropping of the climbing board just a bit past what would have been comfortable.

Yesterday, there had been no need for Doc to lag behind. Ash had come in dead last, unable to drum up enough courage to attempt to climb any higher, until well after the rest of the trainees had crossed the finish marker. Doc hadn't needed to drag his feet on purpose in order to earn them Surge's Ire. Nor to con Echo Squad out of another days worth of food. _He_ had earned that.

Ash gave an angry bark as he lurched outward toward the next handhold, that evidently scared Terry, who was next to him, and made the older boy falter a bit. He felt overwhelmed with a relief he felt he never should have needed when his fingertips caught hold of it, and it made him snarl all the more.

He was bigger than this! This shouldn't have been a big deal! What the hell was wrong with him? He snatched his grip tighter, and threw himself upward toward the next one, with the same yell of frustration and denial, extending an open palm towards the looming outcrop.

He knew right away that something was wrong. Just that briefest moment of timid, unconscious hesitation, that unwilling desire to sure up the position he had, before going after a new one, stole some of the energy from his legs, and robbed him of the momentum he needed. His scornful sound became a distressed wail as he fell away from the wall empty-handed and began to plummet helplessly.

Glen, below, shifted and pressed against the wall in order to avoid being knocked off as well, and Melody reached out for him, quite sure of her own grip. He flailed just out of her reach, and hurtled past her towards the ground.

Someone caught him, though. Around the waist, halting his descent as though at the end of a rope. The stop was jarring, and propelled him face first into the wall but he clung to it desperately, his whole body now quaking in fear. A long, green vine eased from around his torso and snaked its way back up to the top of the wall, past the remainder of Echo Squad.

Everyone looked up to see Bulbasaur, huffing with the expended energy of catching a falling object that weighed twice and again more than he, but the grass-type seemed more concerned for his trainer, who had not even the fortitude remaining to look up from where he was, his face plastered to the wall, hugging it tightly for the security he had so foolishly taken for granted.

Two immense figures looked onto the scene, from the shadow of a nearby cops of trees. Surge had met Silver before, of course—he doubted there was anyone affiliated with the league who hadn't—but the man did strike him as a bit disconcerting, especially with the powerful stare he was now laying on the struggling trainee before them.

Surge tried to ignore it. He didn't have to justify the Corps to any league spook. This was his operation, and damned if he was going to be second-guessed by a has-been like this guy anyways. "Surprised Ketchum is having such a hard time. He flew over that obstacle on his first day."

Silver didn't offer up any real emotional response to the question. He gave a heave of his giant shoulders. "Didn't think he was scared of heights." He offered, along with the shrug.

"He isn't," Surge said simply. "It's more of a stress issue, I would guess. Ketchum is running on fumes, here. The coping mechanisms a person would normally use to ignore those natural reactions the body faces in dangerous situations are no use to anybody in his situation. At this level of stress even just a small amount of additional pressure, which would otherwise be tolerable can lock the bravest men up. He has to find a different way to convince himself to negotiate that obstacle."

Silver looked on in silence, and crossed his arm, unwilling to offer up anything in response to that revelation. Surge was trying not to read too much into it, but eventually the sour expression on the gray-maned beast of a man's face was too much to tolerate.

They could both see Ash clearly from where they were standing, though the boy was certainly too occupied to make them out. He was quaking so hard that it looked like he was having some sort of fit, and with his eyes screwed shut he didn't look to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Silver made a disapproving grunt, and Surge rolled his eyes.

"Look, I'm not going to stop the operation, or make it easier for his sake. Hell, he's done nothing but make it hard on himself, so far, and maybe that's why he, more than anyone else, has to really struggle, if he wants to succeed here. It may seem harsh, but this is really what the Corps is all about. A real trainer, a real corpsman has to be able to find that extra piece of himself. He has to be able to dig deep within. There isn't really a special type of person, for this training, you know? You don't necessarily have to be strong, or fast, or smart, but you have to have that extra something. Guts. Heart, whatever you wanna call it. If he can't muscle through here, and find the stomach to negotiate that obstacle, then he's not the kind of person the Corps needs." The lieutenant said, crossing his burly arms.

Silver only looked back to the officer, with his own arms crossed, seeming not at all intimidated by the man, for what it was worth. "Why would I have asked you to?" He queried, with a serious look. "I'm here for something else." Silver pointed out the the head of the pack, at Doc, with one meaty fingertip. "A warning from Lance."

"Ash, come on!" Melody yelled, from above, back out on the course her voice knocking him from the oblivious terror he felt, if only partially. "We've got to climb up!" she shouted down to him.

He looked up, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything, or make any move that showed he acknowledged her.

"Melody!" Terry complained. "You're barely half-way up! Why don't you let Glen help him, and worry about making it up here yourself, before you slow everyone else down?"

Melody shot the older male, who had just then crested the top a powerful glare, and looked apt to shoot back a foul remark, but Glen interrupted her thought.

"If she's the closest, shouldn't she go back?" he remarked, trying desperately to make it sound as though he wasn't saying so because he believed he was having enough trouble on his own, and didn't think he could manage to help.

Terry just scoffed at the both of them, and worked himself over the top, out of sight, while Glen made a somewhat apologetic face towards Melody and continued onward.

"Come _on_!" Melody beckoned down to him. "We've gotta get a move on!"

He was a wreck, and she could see that, just by looking at him, even from this distance, but that hardly changed the fact that they needed to hurry; there were three more trainees, probably some of the last. If they wanted dinner tonight—and she desperately did—they needed to finish ahead of them. She pleaded with him one final time, and then painstakingly made her descent to come to his aid, knowing that even if she went on without him, it wouldn't do any of them a lick of good.

She worked herself beside him on the wall, trying not to leave too much space for the others to muscle their way ahead, if it came down to that. "Ash, c'mon," she insisted yet again, and finally, he answered her call.

"I cant." he said plainly. Only, it wasn't so plain, since it came through chattering teeth. It was plain enough for her to understand though, and she frowned.

"The next handhold is right there." she explained. It was literally close enough for her to reach out and grab, though it was above him.

"It's too far." Ash said, shaking his head furiously. "I can't."

One of the trainees below them was already trying to take up handholds near her ankles. "How did you do it yesterday, then?"

"Yesterday was different." Ash said, as though he were desperately trying to put her off of the conversation. "Today it's too far."

The trainee that had been pawing around near her boot decided it best to go around. Seeing him crest her waist-level, and make his way up past them reminded her of that meal that was sailing out the window. "We don't have time for this, Ash!" She shouted upwards, evidently scaring the crap out of the trainee who'd just passed her. She tried not to seem too satisfied as he faltered, and had to pause to reaffirm his handholds. "Bulbasaur! Help me out!"

The grass-type Pokemon looked down with some concern at the request, but did not falter, extending his vines down yet again, to make some effort towards helping out. She wished she hadn't sent her own Pokemon out ahead, but Melody didn't need much, she just hoped that a safety-line from the top would give Ash the security he needed. The unconvinced look on Ash's face as the young trainer looked towards the descending vines did not offer her much hope.

She saw the second trainer move past her flank then, and that fury rose up in her again. She knew he didn't deserve it, and she felt like a real piece of shit for doing it almost instantly, but she let go with one hand and slapped him hard against the back of his head, bouncing his face off the barricade.

"What the hell are you? You can save the whole goddamn world, but you can't climb up this wall? Chosen One, my ass! Are you a little boy, or are you a fucking man, Ash Ketchum? Coz right now you're looking an awful lot like the first one!"

Any ounce of panic left his visage then, replaced by a look that was halfway between shame and explosive anger. She was sure she would've apologized to him right then and there, if he hadn't just slapped her arm away from him, and snatched the next handhold in line, with silent tears pouring out of his eyes.

"Looks like Ketchum just needed some motivation." Surge said, with confidence, looking away from the scrambling trainer, and turning on the man beside him, to find him already waking away.

Silver left the thicket, in swish of foliage, only his voice echoing back over the silhouette of brown and flame motif he cut into the forest. "I saw what I needed to. Just keep your eyes peeled, alright? I don't need this getting out of hand."

Surge only shook his head with disgust. What a dick!

Ash overtook the trainee that had passed her, and even caught up to the one on top, and was out of sight in no time, leaving her with a miserable feeling in her gut, as she neared the peak. Bulbasaur, at least, had stuck around to help her out, having received at least no contradictory orders from Ash. The sturdy Pokemon tugged her up, just as the third trainer, the only one that had not overtaken her on her trip, crested beside her.

The other trainee, one of the few other girls in the program, repelled down far faster than she could manage. Seeing her pull ahead, and knowing that if she didn't pass her up, that she would buy her squad another hungry night, with her to blame this time, she let herself slip a little faster than she ought to of. She didn't even realize that she'd fallen, until she felt her the back of her head bounce off the hard ground and send her skull ricocheting back to slam against her bottom jaw.

She faltered trying to get up, and felt like she was trying to balance on water. She couldn't let that stop her, though, she knew, and she tried to charge out ahead, but it was no use. She stumbled off the trail and had to catch hold of a young sapling to keep from falling into a ditch. The other girl took off out ahead of her, and she was powerless to pursue at the necessary pace.

Ash stood waiting with the rest of Echo, except for Doc, who was waiting just shy of the finish line as usual, probably making mocking gestures and comments about the moisture leaking down his face. Without even the strength to get mad over it, the raven-haired trainer just looked down at his Pokemon, trying to take a good gauge of himself in the reflection of Bulbasaur's expression. The grass-type looked back at him in confusion, of course, wondering perhaps—just as much as he—what the problem was.

He looked at his hands next, felt them trembling hard, still, even though he was planted soundly on terra firma. What the hell was wrong with him? Why had that happened? He grit his teeth hard enough to hear them creak. Anything to silence their chattering. He wasn't a fucking wimp! He wasn't a little boy! He wasn't!

"I'm not scared," he said, as much to Bulbasaur, as to himself.

"Bulba?" the Pokemon queried, obviously having no idea what his trainer was getting at, as if to imply 'of course you aren't.' Ash wished that he could maintain that sort of faith.

"_Man_." Terry whined, suddenly. "Here comes the last of them."

"_Of course!_" Glen exclaimed, throwing both his hands in the air, as the girl, the last of the three who had been on their heels along the barricade came running around the bend and out of the woods, huffing into the finish where she collided with the rest of her squad who seemed quite pleased to have her.

"Freakin' Melody," Terry said with a sigh, as though it were a substitute for a curse.

"Seriously," added Glen, the both of them evidently forgetting they had sent Melody back for him. Not that he disagreed with them, really.

In fact... He shouldered Glen out of his way, and pushed past Terry, marching back out onto the course, in spite of the protest from both his squad, and several onlooking D.I.s. He ignored them, though. Melody was going to give him a bunch of grief about how he was wasting time, and then drag her feet on the last stretch? She was about to get a piece of _his_ mind, now.

He stomped off into the woods, with anger washed across his features, but it wasn't long at all before he was caught dead in his tracks, as he saw her there, wobbling across the path. He could tell right away that something wasn't right. It wasn't until he saw her fall down to her knees and then get up going the wrong way that he realized just what was going on, though.

She held her spinning head as she came back up, and tried to orient herself. It was pointless, though, with everything being so blurry. She felt someone catch her, as she fell the next time, but honestly the only reason she was able to tell it apart from the trees she'd collided with previously was that it gave a little during the impact.

"Come on." someone said, collecting her roughly, and hauling her along. Whoever it was didn't make it far before she tripped them.

"Sorry," she mumbled, thinking she had a good guess at who it was, as she landed on her shins again.

"My foot got tangled up is all." Ash said as he heaved her back up. He was exhausted, but she wasn't very heavy.

"No, I meant, about the other thing," she said, shaking her head in an effort to clear it. It only made it worse, though, and she had to bring her free hand up to grasp it. She pushed away the tugging arms. She needed to stay still. Just a few moments was all. She just needed to reorient herself. "My head hurts."

"So are you gonna stand here and cry about it, like a little girl, or are you going to finish the obstacle course?"

She felt her blood boil of course, as she stared at the two revolving images of Ash's dirty, tear-streaked face. It wasn't overtly mean, but it certainly was not mirthful. She couldn't rightly blame him for the comment, after all. It was her just deserts, so she took them.

"I'd pop you one again, if you'd stand still." she offered pitifully to the trainer, who was quite motionless, though he spun in her eyes. They were both too tired and beat up to laugh, though. They just continued.

When they came to the finish line, something happened that he, had he actually stepped back from the situation, and really thought about, would have realized was actually entirely meaningless, but tired and hurt and spent as he was, just pushed him over the edge.

"You should cross first," Melody offered, giving him a little push as they approached.

He'd already crossed, he knew, and it didn't really matter anyways, since they were all Echo Squad, and it meant the same fate anyways. And it wouldn't have mattered anyways, since Doc was still there waiting, with his toes just shy of the finish line, his insurance policy ready to make sure Ash suffered just that extra little bit.

He nodded and stepped across with a sigh, knowing that it changed nothing, and took up his spot with the rest of Echo. When he turned to watch her step across, though, he was surprised to see Doc had turned and taken his leave from the purposeless vigil as well, with Melody still on the course.

...And it made him furious! Just that he would have the gall to make it her fault, even on a technicality, ate what little patience and decency he had left inside him, and spit it back out.

He heard glen take in a breath, and spun on him, knowing, just knowing that he was going to have to hear some other pointless jab at Melody. "Shut your stupid mouth!" he warned, leveling a finger.

"Hey-" Terry began, but Ash just turned to face him sharply, then hauled off and clobbered him.

It didn't do much good, as Ash didn't recall a time where he'd ever put a closed fist to someone with any real zeal, but it sure as hell didn't stop him from leaping onto Doc's shoulders as he passed, and dumping out several Pokemon from their balls in his wake. Tauros slowed the pursuit up considerably, and Snorlax provided a buffer from the side, while Bulbasaur caught hold of one of Doc's arms with a vine whip attack and prevented him from depositing the trainer riding on his back to the dirt. Or, at least, not quite as quickly as he would have.

By the time Ash fell to the ground though, the melee was on. Melody had jumped in against her two Islander compatriots, battling back Glen with her Pokemon, though she was far too unsteady on her feet to jump into the fray herself. A few fly-by attacks from Glen's Swellow did knock her to her rump, though. Terry was mostly tied up trying to get to Ash, and avenge what was surely turning into a yellowish bruise on his face. Snorlax and Tauros were not having it, though, and even once he brought all his Pokemon to bear as well, he was no closer at getting a revenge strike.

On the opposite side of the near two-ton barricade, though, Bulbasaur wasn't having nearly as much effectiveness on Doc who seemed well versed in just the sort of slips and escapes that made his constricting vines next to useless. Bulbasaur had thus far kept the hundred and eighty pound muscular man from caving Ash's head in, but only just. Still, that hardly stopped Doc's Pokemon, who were numerous and skillful, from using a collective Beat Up move at Doc's command, and rolling over him like a tidal wave.

For Ash, it seemed to go on an on, really. By the time he shoved and kicked his way out from underneath one Pokemon, poorly protecting himself from bites and rakes, he was knocked to the ground by another an pummeled from a different angle. It didn't take any of the steam out of him though, and as he saw his break, he went for Doc's legs, and tried to tackle him to the ground, ignoring the Mightyena teeth digging through his boot and trying to drag him off, the same as the stomps Doc was trying to aim at his fingers.

He'd almost dragged the bigger man down, too, before a Pokemon—or at least, he though it was a Pokemon—more powerful than the rest, caught hold of him, and sent him sailing. Only after he landed hard in the dirt and skidded a near yard did the haze of red before his eyes clear enough to realize that it was Surge that had tossed him.

"ECHO SQUAD!" he hollered, louder than he ever had previously, once the brawl was systematically settled, by the D.I.s and the warning shocks of their Pokemon. Ash could see, even from as far away as he'd been thrown, that the enormous man was literally shuddering with rage. "WASHOUT-EXCERCISE! NOW!"

* * *

Max flapped his newest purchase back and forth between his fingertips. "Yeah." he said calmly, looking Ralts over. His expression gradually grew into a smile as the little Pokemon flexed and posed. "I think this will work."

"Ralts!" his partner exclaimed, leaping about happily.

He thought about perhaps trying to get a little practice in with it, but Dawn came around the corner of the Violet City poke mart, he slid it into his pocket without a thought, and devoted himself to not seeming like he was paying her too much attention. Polishing his glasses seemed right, so he set to doing that, in an effort to seem mostly causal.

"Hey, Max!" she greeted, "How are you feeling about today? This'll be your first badge, if you win, won't it?"

"Um," he tried to seem like he was thinking about it, then realized that was stupid. He nodded his head after a moment.

"Caught any good Pokemon to use against Faulkner?" Dawn asked. "I hear he shakes down a lot of new trainers, because of the strong defensive type he favors."

"Flying type." Max said. He could've presented a deluge of other facts he'd discovered about Faulkner, or that he knew off the top of his head about flying type in general, but he held fast. His mouth felt a little dry, and he didn't want to stutter.

Dawn frowned a little. Hadn't Brock said that Max was that talkative type? "So what all Pokemon are you going to use against him?" she asked, casually dropping her arm over his shoulder. She figured if he was shy around new people, she would just have to make sure he knew how nice she was. Brock had let slip that maybe she hadn't made the best first impression, what with being so impatient about getting a move on.

"Uh. R-ralts." Max said, suddenly becoming very stiff.

Dawn removed her arm, quickly, thinking that she'd invaded his personal space. She tried not to recoil at the obvious misstep. "Ralts and what else?"

"J-just Ralts." Max clarified succinctly, though he seemed to relax some, after a moment.

Dawn's frown returned, though, and she tilted her head to the side. She didn't need to ask her question, though. Brock was there by her side, approaching from the nearby center.

"Just Ralts?" he asked, incredulously. "You haven't caught any other Pokemon?"

"Um. No." Max said after a moment.

"You mean in all that time we spent on the road, you didn't catch even one single Pokemon?" Dawn added, showing equal disbelief.

"I got distracted, I guess." He said, looking pointedly away.

"Come on, Max." Brock groaned. "Don't put me through this again."

Max's eyes widened, and he slipped his glasses back on, thinking he might be missing something in the finer details of Brock's expression.

"Ash challenged me three times with just Pikachu before anyone could talk some sense into him." Brock moaned.

Max raised a finger conjecturally. "Didn't Ash and Pikachu win, though?"

Brock laid two palms on Max's shoulders. "Trust me when I say that not everything needs to be done the hard way."

"Boy if there was ever a lesson to take away from Ash, that would be it, wouldn't it?" Max offered, hoping to allay the issue.

The three of them shared a laugh then, but respectfully kept it short.

"I think Ralts and I will be just fine on our own, though," Max offered, giving one of Brock's hands a comforting pat.

Brock seemed troubled, though, and gave him a look that did not seem fully pleased by his assumption. Brock suddenly felt very akin to Misty right then. He remembered himself wondering why Misty always took it so personally that Ash made mistakes and judgment errors. Personally, he'd always thought it best to let Ash learn from his own folly. He knew it was a far more convincing teacher than recommendations from him, who seemed at best a detached spectator in the heat of the moment, and Misty, who seemed at best a severe annoyance to Ash.

He definitely didn't want Max to whiff on his first attempt, though. He wasn't sure if he could let one of his friends take another defeat that was sure to sting. Not this soon. Max, though, was sensible, Brock knew. Max could take advice. Loved taking advice, actually. Every little nugget of wisdom Max could get hold of an tuck into his little mental Rolodex, he did so with relish.

"Maybe Dawn and I could lend you a Pokemon" Brock suggested, with an appraising look towards the blunette.

With surprising support—being that she felt the need to provide reparations for her earlier awkwardness—Dawn seconded the idea. "Yeah. That way you can go into an even three-on-three."

Max wrinkled his brows up. "Um."

"Geodude could be just the thing for you! Rock type, good defenses." He snapped his fingers. "I can just pop right back into the center here, and have my brother transfer him over here, too."

"Well," Max started, but Brock was already backpedaling, congratulating himself on being so thoughtful.

"And here," Dawn said, holding out a poke ball in front of him. "You can use Buneary, too! She knows Ice Beam. Should work well for you, right?"

Max hazarded a glance down at Ralts, and they favored each other with resigned looks. "Um. Yeah. Sure." He let her plop the ball into his open palm.

Soon enough Brock had returned and placed a poke ball into his opposite hand as well. "There you go."

"When were you wanting to go give it a shot, Max?" Dawn queried.

"Right now, I guess." Max said, still holding both poke balls as though truly unsure of what to do with them.

Both of the older trainers seemed all that surprised by his answer, but neither did they seem all that pleased by it, if he was reading their faces correctly. He shrugged, and set both of the borrowed Pokemon on his belt, snapping them in place to either side.

Dawn watched him read their pokedex entries over as they walked to the Gymnasium, pouring over move-lists, abilities, type-tables, counting out figures on his fingers, and mumbling to himself as they walked. He definitely had a vastly different approach to Pokemon than anyone she'd ever met.

Brock went ahead of them, into the Gym to help set up the challenge for his novice companion, leaving the two younger trainers in the lobby. When Max looked up from his pokedex, finally, after having only half-acknowledging the breeders departure, he was surprised to find Dawn shouldering up her backpack, and treading away from him backwards.

"I'm gonna go change, alright? I'll catch up with you and Brock in just a minute," she explained, nodding towards the foyer bathroom. Not really knowing what else to do, or having any idea what she really meant, Max nodded his accord, and waited calmly, still wondering what he was going to do with the two poke balls clutched in his palm. He didn't exactly have a plan for how he would put them to use. At least not one as meticulously planned as the one he and Ralts had come up with. He knew Brock and Dawn were trying to help him out, but he wasn't exactly sure how it was all going to work out. Honestly, he still wasn't sure he'd have preferred they just stay out of it.

Still, he tried to take it all in stride, when Brock peeked back through the gymnasium doors, and beckoned him in, with a smile. Brock would never do anything but look out for him, he knew. That was why he'd leapt at the chance to travel with the Pokemon breeder. In all the time Max had known him, Brock had been a perfunctory adviser to Ash, and never once had he done otherwise in that role, either. Brock certainly wouldn't try to undermine his own attempts by trying to do all the work for him, and he had to trust that Dawn wouldn't either.

They were just trying to lend him a hand was all.

"All set." Brock assured him, peeking back out of the main gymnasium. It certainly didn't _seem_ like he was being patronizing.

Max rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "Well, I guess now's as good a time as any."

He let Brock show him into the gym proper, an open-aired courtyard that would've been indistinguishable from a traditional zen rock garden were it not for the demarcation lines of a Pokemon battlefield raked into the sand. In the midst of the picturesque scene stood a young man who seemed as though he might've been a bit older than Ash, though certainly not as old as Brock. The comparison must've inspired some expectation of immaturity in him, he realized, because as the leader turned to face him, taking hold of the upright staff of his wooden rake with both hands, Max was caught off guard by the striking, confident quality of his voice.

"I am Falkner, the Violet City Pokemon Gym Leader!" he proclaimed, with surety. With an open palm extended in Max's direction, he wordlessly asked his opponent to grace him likewise with introduction.

He found his mouth clammy before the pronouncement, but he stuck with it anyways, for fear of seeming intimidated. "I'm Max," he began, thinking of giving an account of where he was from as well but settling with "and I'm here to battle you for a Zephyr Badge," instead. He closed his fist hard before himself with the proclamation, in what was typical junior-trainer style.

To Brock, standing on the side-lines, he looked every bit the hard-charging, confident, and indefatigable young battler Ash had been at his age. He felt his heart swell with pride that he was beholden to it, once more, and yet he felt a twinge of sadness, when he realized that he wished that Ash could've been here to see exactly what he was seeing. He thought that maybe that was exactly what Ash could've used. A little window into his early days-those crazy, impulsive, and unexpectedly successful waxing hours of his career—that Max presented to him, right at that moment. It probably would've done Ash a world of good, in fact. He decided that he'd send Ash a text and tell him all about it, once this battle was over.

Falkner and Max wasted no further time in dispensing with the formalities, and setting to work. Max threw the poke ball laden heavily with Brock's Geodude to the floor, and issued his opening command, just as Falkner let loose with his own Pokemon, Hoot-Hoot.

Buneary seemed a little confused though, when the voice of it's trainer was not the voice it heard. Instead, it was Max who called for an "Ice Beam!" The hesitation cost Buneary and Max dearly, as Hoot-Hoot quickly carried out it's opposite and corresponding order.

"Hypnosis!"

The tiny owl Pokemon emitted a droning, monotonous call, that seemed to invade the ears of all present, making them feel slightly lethargic. The effect was rather more severe on Buneary, however, as following a few more unheeded calls for "Ice Beam!" from Max, the rabbit slumped down onto it's tummy and yielded to it's desire for rest, ignoring the battle altogether.

To his credit, Brock could see, Max didn't panic. He continued to urgently call for Buneary, but didn't twitch or stamp or flail about in the way Ash would've early in his career. He understood what was happening, and was keeping an eye on what his opponent was up to, rather than getting upset at Buneary who could no more help itself than Max could.

It was a good thing too, since Falkner's next act was a bit unorthodox.

"Hoot-Hoot, return!"

Faulkner's Pokemon left the field in a beam of red light, and was replaced in a flash by a Dodrio, obviously one of the leader's favored attackers. He ordered up an immediate Tri-Attack to take advantage of the opportunity granted by Buneary's current state—pronounced by Dodrio's more powerful attacks, as opposed to Hoot-Hoots more strategic offerings—before it was gone.

Dodrio's three heads aligned themselves with uncharacteristic precision, and opened wide their craggy beaks to expel energy of three separate by finely attuned wavelengths.

Max had nearly succeeded in rousing Buneary when the three beams converged, leaving searing marks across the sand from three different origins straight to their singular terminus. The focused beam connected punishingly, sending Buneary tumbling end over end with a squeal of combusted air, and kicking up a tremendous amount of sand.

"Buneary, are you alright?" Max hollered, clenching his eyes shut in the sand-cloud. He worked it over in his mind, even as he waited for a response, unsure if he would even get one. If the sand was that lose, than any pitched battle would certainly create sand-storm conditions. He'd read about those. Any Pokemon that wasn't a rock or steel type would have a hard time dealing with that.

When at last the abrasive sand settled, and he could open his eyes again, he saw that Buneary was not entirely down and out. Even now the rabbit Pokemon was working itself back up to full height, and preparing to re-enter the fray. He opened his mouth to utter some words of encouragement, but someone from behind beat him to the punch.

"B-E-A-T Beat 'em,  
B-U-S-T Bust 'em  
Beat 'em, Bust 'em,  
That's our custom!"

He half-turned, and then poorly withheld an open gape at what he saw. Dawn swished back and forth, with feigned punches, each of her fists a star-burst of silver pom-pom, as she cheered on her Pokemon from the sideline, in full cheer-leading regalia.

"C'mon Buneary, let's adjust 'em!" she finished, rotating her left arm, and delivering one final punch for spirit, before giving Max—who was now staring at her fully—a sly wink. That's what she'd meant by change.

"Another Tri-Attack!" Max heard Faulkner holler, and spun, to issue a return attack, but Buneary was already on it, scampering rapidly across the sand to close the distance even as it's frosty blue glow accumulated in preparation.

The Ice Beam and Tri-Attack passed each other, and for a moment it appeared as though Buneary had dodged the Dodrio's attack, rushing past the point of convergence and to safety, but the subsequent explosion of tripolar energies colliding sent the poor Pokemon sailing, anyways.

Fortunately Buneary's Ice Beam struck home as well, freezing two of Dodrio's heads together and to the neck of the third which hung heavily. The super-effective attack probably would've been a one-hit knockout, but Max could see, as he withdrew the unconscious Buneary from battle, the obvious signs of burning, which Max knew lowered a Pokemon's capacity to inflict damage, as well as causing the expected residual pain.

"Thanks Buneary," Max said quietly, determined to show his appreciation for the hard-fought effort, but unwilling to turn and face Dawn. He clipped the ball she had given him back to his belt, and brought forth his next one.

Faulkner had returned his Dodrio to it's ball, though, and sent out Hoot-Hoot, immediately catching his Pokemon with Hypnosis again, due to the slight hesitation of unfamiliarity, putting it soundly to sleep. Rather than withdraw Hoot-Hoot this time, Faulkner switched to Confusion, in an effort to gradually wear down Geodude with blasts of psychic energy.

Brock was surprised again, when Max neither lamented the turn of events, nor lost his temper. Max, like he, knew that Geodude's defenses would hold.

No such attack would've been enough to defeat the hardy Pokemon of Pewter City Gym, after all. Max only issued his order, as Geodude emerged from sleep, weakened but unwounded. "Rock Throw!"

Brock's Pokemon picked up a solid chunk of stone and hurled it with deadly accuracy. Though Max was well away of a Hoot-Hoot's precision sense of timing and high speed, even he was surprised with the near miss.

Rather than retreat as Max might've expected, the Hoot-Hoot swooped aside and delivered another Confusion attack on Faulkner's orders. The next incoming rock did not miss, and smacked Hoot-Hoot clean out of the air.

Max hollered for a followup, but it didn't come with any rapidity. Hoot-Hoot falteringly made it back up onto one foot, and took to the air again, leaving Max confused.

Though, likely not as confused as Geodude. The insidious attack having taken it's secondary effect for which it took it's namesake, Geodude wobbled around, disoriented, and for a moment, Max thought for certain that the rock-type would bean _him_ with a rock in it's confusion.

True to his previous form, Faulkner withdrew the wounded Hoot-Hoot, and sent in his third Pokemon, a very powerful and regal looking Pidgeot. He wanted to urge Geodude to use Rock Throw, to issue a command that would bolster and focus the tottering boulder but before he could, he was again beaten to it.

"Yeah, Yeah,  
Do We Rock?  
Yeah, Yeah,  
Do we Take it to the Top?  
Yeah, Yeah,  
Are we ever gonna stop?"

It was Dawn again, flailing and pointing her pompoms and shaking her skirt side to side. Knowing that he had to stay focused with Faulkner's strongest Pokemon on the field, his staring was far more protracted this time.

"No way! Go-o-o-o Geodude!" she cheered from behind him, as he turned once more to face the field.

He thought for a moment that Dawn's support had had a sobering effect on Geodude—since it certainly had an effect of one sort or another on him—but by the next moment, he knew he was dead wrong.

He called for a Rock Throw, but he knew as soon as Geodude brought both arms to the ground, and hunkered low, that a Rock Throw was not what was happening. Instead, a weak Magnitude attack shook the outdoor arena, which only served to upset their footing, since Pidgeot was a flying type and thus was, by nature, out of contact with the ground.

Faulkner, who seemed to have been biding his time, strategically, was now presented with an interesting idea. With a wry smile, he gave his order. "Mirror Move!"

Max was blown away by what happened next, and found himself explaining it before it even happened. "Geodude used Magnitude, a ground type move that is completely ineffective against the flying-type Pidgeot. So in response, Pidgeot uses Mirror Move, a high level move that replicates the last move used by your opponent, and since Geodude's rock-type nature makes him weak against ground type attacks, Pidgeot essentially helps Geodude finish itself off."

It all happened exactly as Max predicted, down to the letter. Pidgeot grasped firmly onto solid ground with it's talons and issued forth a tremor that was immensely more effective than it's counterpart. Geodude went down in a pebbly heap.

"What a brilliant move." Max lamented as he withdrew Geodude. The rock-Pokemon had done good work, though, and he gave the ball a conciliatory pat, before stashing it on his belt.

Brock and Dawn had given their help. He accepted that. Buneary and Geodude had gotten their licks in, even though they hadn't been able to put away any of Faulkner's Pokemon so far. Still, he felt a sense of relief as he grasped the Nest Ball that contained his Ralts This was something he'd actually planned for.

On the sidelines, though, Brock and Dawn shared looks of worry, and disgrace.

"_That didn't exactly go over how I planned it._" Dawn whispered, aside. Her look made it clear to Brock that she had expected more to come of the help she'd offered. Though the touted Ice Beam had hit it's mark, KO's were clearly what counted here, and that was a burden even he felt.

"_Tell me about it. Geodude didn't even manage to take out his weakest Pokemon_" Brock moaned.

They both realized they were leaving Max to his own devices here, devices that were notably weak against flying-type attacks, for one. Unproven and untested, for another. Theories were great and all, but real experience had to come in to the formula somewhere—just as Ash had discovered trying to get by on panache and determination alone—the key was practice!

Forgetting herself, Dawn nearly missed her cue when Ralts popped onto the battlefield, but quickly caught her tempo—once more interrupting Max, unbeknownst to her—and set to motion.

"Salt makes ya thirsty,  
Pepper makes ya sneeze,  
But when it comes to battlin',  
We make ya buckle at your Knees!"

Max turned, following the display, to issue his own words of support to Ralts, but Unfinished, Dawn shouted and gesticulated with all of her might, as though trying to physically dispense her misgivings. "Go Ralts! Go-o Ralts!" she cheered, leaping high into the air with a flourish.

With a bit of frustration, Max turned from Dawn and back to his baby Pokemon, and nodded. "Alright Ralts, just like we talked about, okay?"

Dawn nearly turned blue with shame when she realized that in the throes of her cheer, she'd disrupted Max long enough for Faulkner to send his Hoot-Hoot back out.

Brock and Dawn shared a crestfallen groan as once again, Faulkner beat Max to the punch with an order for "Hypnosis!" and once again, Max's Pokemon fell into serene sleep.

But hearing their wail, Max reminded them that "Ralts' ability—Synchronize—reflects status effects back at the opponent. If Hoot-Hoot puts Ralts to sleep, it falls asleep as well."

Sure enough, Faulkner's Hoot-Hoot fell limply as well, inextricably lulled to sleep by it's own deviousness, until such time as both Pokemon awakened.

Brock took very little relief in that, however. If Max believed he would wait patiently, and then order Ralts to attack once he woke back up, he evidently hadn't been watching much of the match so far.

But Max had been watching, and so he was desperately trying to rally his Pokemon back to consciousness, even as Falkner yet again swapped out Pokemon as had been his MO throughout the battle. This time he switched to Pidgeot, and called for a Whirlwind attack which the flying type issued forth with a few flaps of it's enormous wingspan.

Huge, coiling clouds of sand came along with the wind, and buffeted both he and his Pokemon, and he was very thankful for his need to wear glasses at that moment, as coarse sand whipped his face, and the hands he elevated to protect it.

He heard Brock and Dawn make sounds of grief behind him, but he did not panic. Whirlwind was not a flying type move, and even enhanced though it was by the artificial "weather" this arena imbued into the attack, it would not be enough to finish Ralts All he had to do was weather the storm, so to speak.

"Now, Ralts!"

_Crack! _

The powerful sound startled everyone. Perhaps they'd have expected it from Ash and his Pikachu, or maybe even from a larger and more intimidating Pokemon, sure, but hardly from a Ralts. Still, nobody could deny that a Thunderbolt had just shot out from the dust cloud and struck Pidgeot unerringly—for how could it have possibly been fast enough to dodge—right in the beak.

The powerful blow resounded with the wavering rumble of a lightning strike, and left the two competitors standing on more even footing, perhaps footing that was slanted in Max's favor.

Faulkner may have had three Pokemon to Max's one, but all three now were injured, and severely. Pidgeot didn't look like it could take another hit like that, and the gym-leader doubted any of his other Pokemon could either.

Max felt confident as he watched the bird-trainer flinch from his game, refusing to switch out Pokemon, and pressing the attack to its fullest. "_People say you can clip Flying-type Pokemon's wings with a jolt of electricity... I won't allow such insults to bird Pokemon! I'll show you the real power of the magnificent flying type! Wing Attack!"_

Pidgeot recovered from it's mid-air stagger and tucked into a dive, preparing to slash at the grounded grass-type with it's wing-tip in a fly-by strike. This time the move would be super-effective, and this time, it would finish this upstart trainer for good, Faulkner believed.

The attack never struck home, though. By the time Pidgeot went into it's terminal trajectory and began the dive, Ralts was gone. When the huge bird Pokemon doubled back, and made another pass, Ralts vanished yet again. Max tried hard to contain his grin

Faulkner realized what was happening, though. "Teleport." he hissed under his breath. He signaled to his Pokemon with an outstretched hand. "Aerial Ace!"

Max held in a breath. This was the moment of truth. This would determine whether he went on to win, or fail. He pushed his breath out in one final preventative measure. "Lucky Chant!"

He and Ralts both closed their eyes. There was no point in either of them leaving them open. Even if there was enough visibility to see anything, amidst the sand, Aerial Ace always hit it's mark. Max could hear Ralts making soft, rhythmic noises, and hoped that Lucky Chant would be enough to mitigate, or at least reduce the possibility of a one-hit knockout.

There was a sharp whistling sound, as Pidgeot cut the air like a cruise missile and blasted into his unseen Pokemon through the dense cover of airborne sand, kicking even more of the harsh substance into the air.

There was a tense silence, as Pidgeot reappeared at the opposite side of the cloud and took off into a looping climb that brought him back around to Faulkner's side of the field. "Looks like the wind is with _us,_" the leader commented dryly.

The sand seemed to twist about and hang there in the air, obscuring the fate of his Pokemon for far too long. Faulkner waited, and Max did not call out, fearing—understandably—that if Ralts called out to him in return, it would inevitably mean exposing himself to another Aerial Ace attack, visible or no.

Dawn could see the need arise, and it was a great effort to fight through her tension, in order to meet it. It seemed like her vast reservoir of inspiring rhetoric had gone dry. She bit her lower lip. Max needed a cheer right now, more than ever!

"What's another one I know—c'mon Brock, help me out here!" Dawn hissed, trying to obscure her uncertainty with a pom-pom. "He needs a great cheer! Something specific! "

Brock hardly saw how he could be helpful in this regard, but still he offered his thoughts on the matter, in spite of his own tensions. "Maybe something about flying type Pokemon?"

"I'm cheering for him, not against him," Dawn harrumphed.

"What, you don't know any good digs?" Brock blinked.

"Digs?"

"Yeah you know. Like, stuff to mock the opposition."

"You mean, like, be mean to Faulkner?" Dawn asked, in stark dismay of the notion. Cheering was about cheering your friends on, not jeering at the competition. If that was the case, they'd probably call it "Belittling" instead of "Cheering!"

"Well, I'm not saying you should talk bad about his mom or anything, but-"

"No, wait that's perfect!" Dawn interrupted, slamming a pom-pom down into an open palm.

"Thought of something good, then?" He really hoped it wouldn't be about Faulkner's mom.

"Watch me work it, Brock." Dawn replied confidently, and spun sharply away, with an address towards the opposite end of the field this time. She leveled a pom-pom towards Falkner, and jostled her shoulders in time with the words.

"There was a little Pidgey, who sat up on a wall,  
cheering for the other guy, he had no sense at all."

As she completed the couplet, she shook her head sharply.

"He slipped right down from 'top that wall, fell and bumped his head,"

For this part she dropped her hands down in a cascading motion.

"But when he came back up again, this is what he said:"

She reversed the motion to complete this phrase, then launched into a flurry of motions, now directed towards their young companion.

"Go, go, go ye mighty Max!  
Fight, fight, fight ye mighty Max!  
Win, win, win ye mighty Max!  
Go, fight, win, until the very end!"

Max visibly swelled, though he didn't look back for fear that it would give his blush away. He seemed to grow half a foot taller, as he yelled out triumphantly.

"Thunderbolt!"

The same deafening crack stole out from the sand, just as it settled, to reveal Ralts glowing white with the gathered energy of the TM-taught attack. It struck home hard and Pidgeot plummeted like a stone, assuredly knocked out.

Dawn and Brock leaped into the air and caught each-other in their joy, while Max gently reigned himself in to finish the job. Faulkner tried to rally his Dodrio, but the half-frozen bird couldn't even hold it's heads up, much less direct a competent attack. A thunderbolt struck it, and put it down, along with the still-sleeping Hoot-Hoot.

"_I understand... I'll bow out gracefully,"_ Faulkner acquiesced with a sigh, and tended to his defeated Pokemon, as Max rushed to meet his own, midfield.

"Yeah!" Max cried, throwing Ralts into the air and catching him again several concurrent times, in congratulations. "You kicked butt, Ralts!"

"Raaaaa," the Pokemon managed with delirious happiness, weathered by it's victory but still willing to share in the revelry.

Max returned his Pokemon with a dauntless grin, and made for the opposite end of the rock-garden. He heard Faulkner muttering to himself over Hoot-Hoots recumbent form. Max tried to hide his exuberant expression

"...For pity's sake! My dad's cherished bird Pokemon..." The young man extended a poke ball and returned the KO'd owl Pokemon, then turned to face Max, starting as though continuing a conversation they'd been having in earnest the whole time. "Well, a defeat is a defeat." He paused to dig in his kimono, and offer a gleaming metallic badge. "Take this official Pokemon League Badge, to show that you were victorious."

Max took the badge with a nod, then stepped away, returning to where his friends were. He felt his smile returning in magnitudes as he approached them. He didn't offer them much. Just a "Thanks" to each as he deposited their respective poke balls back into outstretched palms. With a slightly amused expression he withdrew a TM disk from his pocket and placed that into Brock's hand as well. Still, he kept quiet, content with his own personal victory, and marched back through the complexes front gate ahead of them, turning the Zephyr Badge over and over between his fingers.

"You know, he kind of made us look like fools for doubting him." Dawn said, with a slightly put out, but still impressed look, as she followed their younger companion out at a distance.

"No doubt, there." Brock acknowledged, looking down at the poke ball in his hands. "Is there still egg on my face?" he asked, glancing over.

"Only here." Dawn explained, indicating his whole visage with a twisting gesture of her hand, and a quiet laugh. "Me?"

"Oh yeah." He said with equal mirth, as he walked alongside her. "You've got it everywhere."

* * *

Misty sat in her high-backed chair, reclined slightly, but biting at the nail of her pinky. She was watching her Pokemon through the two-way mirror that comprised nearly an entire wall of her office, and she wasn't overly proud of what she was seeing.

Granted, she could understand that there was something to be said for hands-on training. And yes, she did understand that she was having to be a little spotty right now with her time, because of all the issues needing her attention at the moment—Gary's nearly daily interruption of her regimen seemed like only one of the many things demanding her time—but still she was not happy with what she saw.

The same scene lay before her that had a week previous, and not a single improvement had been made. Gyarados and Kingler still pushed each-other to a level entirely beyond the rest of her Pokemon's capabilities, in a never-ending display of one-upmanship. Starmie and Staryu though competent at carrying out tasks generally milled about, or remained sedentary without instruction, while the rest of her Pokemon either did the same, or acted mischievously when they believed they were not being overseen.

Now, she considered herself a realist, in that she certainly did not expect progress to make itself. In fact, to the opposite effect, she'd always believed that inaction led to stagnation and regression. Still, she set her standards at a lofty height when it came to matters concerning her beloved Pokemon, and she did feel some disappointment in not seeing those standards met.

Though, were one to believe this discontentment to be directed at her Pokemon, they'd have been mistaken, surely. For it was certainly herself and the predicament before her that taxed her mind.

"Training isn't something that happens all on it's own, ya know," she explained mockingly to herself, reinforcing the lesson, even as she typed away at a requisition order for a new pump monitoring system—yet another task keeping her from her Pokemon

It was a mechanism she relied on often to do her more introspective thinking. Actually, it was one of the reasons she'd had this office built with insulated glass, and on the inside of the concrete substructure of the arena. She had been ridiculed often before by her sisters for talking to herself, after all, and with the monster responsibilities on her shoulder the idiosyncrasy did not lessen with her inheritance of the lead position within the gym.

She welcomed it, though. It helped her sort through her thoughts most of the time, and even when it didn't, it usually helped her feel better, even if it was just because she got the opportunity to rant at someone who actually listened.

"I need to find some freaking time, is all," she griped, bemoaning the mountain of work left to complete yet. "It's like being a gym-leader is getting in the way of being an actual gym-leader."

She granted herself that. Her complex, and truthfully, the cerulean legacy itself could have been said to be in something of a rebuilding period. The Sensational Sisters themselves may have been hot shit, but this gym, and reputation she wanted it to have as a complex that doled out fierce competition to those that came through town looking to earn a league badge, was only yet beginning to be established. The Gym had always been an attraction, yes, but under her sisters control it had never really been known for it's potent battling.

She wanted better than that, though. In both categories. She wanted Cerulean Gym to be a place where not just trainers, but_ everyone _wanted to be. A place where just your average person, who might otherwise have littler interest in Pokemon battling would enjoy, and perhaps—and this point was very important to Misty, truth be told—begin to foster a liking for, an interest in, at the very least, Water Pokemon, which she herself held above all others.

At the same time, she wanted to elevate her battling to such a level that the Gym, and her home town would become synonymous with the sort of overwhelming skill, and powerful presence that would make the place truly revered as the best. Not that she wanted to scare trainers away from here, of course—that was her bread and butter after all!—but she certainly didn't mind at all if wannabe hot-shots and big-mouths went home crying without a badge, either.

"Problem is, finding enough time in the day to do both," Misty acknowledged.

Truthfully, they were severely under-staffed, that much was true. Misty literally ran everything with her own two hands, with only very half-hearted clerical and custodial work from her sisters. There were a million different ways to impress upon a person just how completely and utterly the day to day operations of this gym relied on her. She had talked herself blue in the face trying to get almost all of them across to her sisters.

"With them it's always 'Hire someone!' or 'Find some boy to do it, if it's so hard!'... Sheesh," She remarked, careful to add the proper distasteful drawl, and chipper overtone to indicate Violet and Lily respectively.

She'd always resisted the idea of hiring additional help, and it was for no single reason. There was more to it than just the fact that gym coffers had up until recently been low, with the ongoing renovations. And to be honest, there was more to it even than the sense of enjoyment she got from being able to say to her sisters "I _am_ the Cerulean Gym."

There was the fact that she felt uncomfortable putting something she regarded as more than her own responsibility, but rather as her own _livelihood_ into someone's hands who cared no more about the place than the dollar amount on their next paycheck. Her sisters might have been lazy bums sometimes, but at least they still gave a shit about _her_, even if they only phoned it in around the gym. Not to mention, she liked very much the idea that the Gym was something of an heirloom, and had always been, since it's beginning, a family-operated establishment. Granted, the Gym itself had grown somewhat in scope, since the days of it's inception, beyond the scale which it would generally be considered tenable by a family the size of her own. Still, she was reluctant to take that step, perhaps just as much because she enjoyed the idea, as not wanting to be the one to break that familial tradition.

She'd made all this known to her sisters as well, time and time again, of course, but that certainly would not slow the tide, the zeitgeist of this new fortune that had befallen them, and what it meant for the Gym, and—perhaps most importantly to those in question—their position within it.

They'd dragged her into the living room yesterday, shoving her into the overstuffed recliner unceremoniously sweeping aside the contents of the coffee-table, and laying a stack of papers before her. She'd known what they were going to say before they all plopped down in a row across from her, and spat it out.

"We think it's time you looked into hiring some help."

She'd made a whiny sound, and squinted her eyes as she rolled away from them, trying to be as deflecting as possible to the issue, but honestly, they'd caught her at a moment where she had just been thinking about how busy her upcoming week could be. When she finally let the roll of her eyes take her back to the sight of them, she was displeased to find that they weren't going to let the issue slide for the sake of not causing an argument. Usually she could just make it clear with a gesture or two that the idea rubbed her the wrong way, and they'd pretend that they were only joking.

Still, they were sitting there, staring right back at her with intensity, each of them regarding her as though she were some chief political figure, to whom they had presented their consultation, and were expecting a critical decision from.

Daisy's serious look might've been sincere, actually. Daisy frequently said things like "You're going to age badly, if you keep working so late," or "All this stress is going to give you white hair," which, she supposed was Daisy's way of emphasizing the importance of something, even if it was a little cockeyed in it's approach. Violet and Lily may as well have had pleading looks on their faces, instead of concerned ones, though. She knew her middle sisters were mostly concerned with themselves, and freeing up their time at the gym to go and do as they pleased with their afternoons.

And really, she couldn't blame any of them, she supposed. They all had careers of their own, that really didn't include this gym in any huge capacity. Still, she tried not to let that fact influence her opinion too greatly. It wasn't as though they hadn't ever caused her any huge inconvenience, or anything.

"There's fifty applications, here." Lily explained.

"We've been taking them for like, the past six months," Violet noted, trying to seem unimpressed, and apparently providing these figures just for that reason, as she soon clarified: "It took that long just to hunt down fifty people willing to work for you."

Misty shared a flat, and likewise unimpressed look with Violet then, who merely stuck out her face at the end of her neck mockingly.

"We really think you should give these a look, baby sis," Daisy stated plainly, her voice lacking none of the stern quality required to halt the fight before it started.

"With that many to choose from, you should totally be able to find at least a few you like, right?" Lily asked, her smile so obviously hinging on a positive answer that Misty almost found it comical.

She'd given into their desires, eventually, though it had taken them nearly two hours of what she called nagging, and they called convincing to finally break her spirit. Though, her concession of the issue was not without reservation, and certainly not without condition.

At any point in the process, she was one-hundred percent free to change her mind about the whole thing, she'd made them swear, and every portion of the interviewing and hiring process, down to the last, was entirely up to her. Her sisters would not so much as make a peep about who and how she decided to select the applicants, or so they promised.

She gave a small sigh, as she jostled through the three orderly stacks of printed information, each held together by a binder-clip, hoping that somehow she'd find a flaw significant enough to merit dismissing the whole matter.

The first potential candidate for employment Ensign Parker, former Kantonese Navy, first name Lesley, which Misty assumed was why the man simply preferred to be addressed as Ensign Parker, or just Parker. She'd brought him in for an interview just yesterday, and had been both thoroughly impressed, and thoroughly dismayed at the imaculacy of his resume.

Six years of decorated maritime service, discharged with honors. Following that, two years of civilian service as a Pokemon League liaison for the Rangers in Sevii, along with all manner of official commendations for exceptional Pokemon training, and battling, both in and out of uniform. He even had an official recommendation letter from Mr. Goodshow, the president of the Pokemon League for "Commendable service and Citizenship".

Parker himself was a man just past thirty, but with a rigid body that more resembled a professional swimmer, than the expected paunch of a junior grade officer. She wasn't going to come right out and tell anyone that he was pretty easy on the eyes with all those abdominal, but she'd caught her sisters making muted cat-calls through the arena door, when he'd stripped down to his speedo, and taken a few timed laps at her request and she had not been too inclined to stop them.

Superficial aspects aside, Parker was very well qualified for the job, and seemed to have all the aptitude she desired as well. He'd spoken at length about his service as liaison to the Pokemon Rangers with some pride, and it did somewhat impress and reassure her that this was a man who had put his vessel and life on the line to help defend ranger conservations efforts from Pokemon poachers.

She essentially had no choice but to hire him.

The other two Diana and Briana were two younger girls, closer to her age who she had nearly dismissed on sight, if not for that reason alone, than for the fact that their resumes indicated heavily that they were coordinators. The two girls had each earned top-sixteen honors in both the Kanto and Johto grand festivals for the past three years running, and were consistent performers in their field, who were not at all afraid to admit that they regarded her older sisters as idols. She evaluated them to be near exactly the type of people she didn't want working at the Gym, almost immediately.

However, she'd been forced to eat those thoughts humbly, once she'd investigated a little more to find out that the pair had been volunteering as Water-Pokemon care-specialists at the Daycare Center outside of town for longer than she'd actually been a trainer, and had actually wanted to work at the Cerulean Gym since they were eight years old.

Admittedly, she'd spent the next hour or so, quite unprofessionally telling and listening to stories concerning water Pokemon, either onerous ones that Diana and Briana had been responsible for, or that Misty had encountered throughout her early adventures, and her gym-leading career.

She did feel as though she'd gotten a good measure of the two girls, though, and quite simply, she had a good feeling about them.

Still, she felt that hesitancy rise in her, as she looked over the paperwork. She still felt uncomfortable with the idea of lending the responsibility of the gymnasium, even in part, to others not kin to her. She brought a hand up to rub the side of her face, as she lifted her gaze up to the two-way mirror, once again, and surveyed the rabble of her unattended Pokemon

"Time to step outside your comfort zone, I guess."

She had a responsibility, after all. Not just to herself, but to her Pokemon as well. If she wanted her dream and her career to flourish, then of course it was tied directly to them. If she wanted them to improve and thereby, her prospects, then her _first_ responsibility was to them. She had to be a better trainer, and the best way to do that, right now, was to become a more _accessible_ one. And the way to do that, was this!

Now that she had rationalized it, she realized, as she looked down to confirm the numbers, that she was already half-way through dialing.

* * *

When Ash had heard washout-exercise, he had assumed it to be a task which would involve a bath of one sort or another, and had he been in any real shape to think about it, he'd have seen that in a way, it was. A mud-bath was a sort of bath, after all.

The five of them stood three feet apart in a column, facing toward and away from one another, alternatively, so that only one of them would be facing no one. They stood in this way at the bottom of a ten foot hole, that had to of been at least half-full of feet mud in some places. Unfortunately for Ash, he seemed to be enjoying the deeper end, where mud came nearly to his jawline, and he had to keep treading in place to keep himself from sinking.

He was not however, the odd man out, and so he'd been placed so that he was looking directly at Terry, and had been quite surprised at the severity of the black eye he'd given the orange islander, at first. The exercise was not, he soon came to learn, simply standing in the cold, saturated mud. Through instruction from Surge, they'd managed to haul a very heavy and lengthy log up from the muck—which Ash, at first, could not believe to be anything other than a section of telephone pole—and were thereafter instructed to hold it aloft at the full extension of their arms.

Though the fulfillment of the command left the log listing a bit in his direction due to disproportionate height, the task had seemed simple and straight-forward, if a bit mucky. Once they'd been holding the nearly eight-hundred pound log aloft for ten minutes or so, his opinion had started to change. He'd thought about letting his arms bow a little, until Surge caught Glen doing the exact same thing, and received a massive electrical jolt for their trouble. It certainly hadn't helped them any to slope shoulders, either, as now Surge was keeping a pretty close eye out for this phenomenon in particular.

The minutes seemed to drag out into an hour, and the hour seemed to drag out into eternity, as the soreness in their arms turned to fire, and that fire turned into a tearing, rending agony that was evident on every last one of them.

There wasn't as single one of them who was silent, not even Doc. He was groaning and snarling just like the rest of them, as they held aloft what had become seemingly as heavy as any collective burden they had ever known.

Glen's face was twisted and lined with pain, and he knew his own had to be the same. He couldn't see Terry's face, but he could tell by the quaking set of his shoulders that it was probably similar. He could hear sobs from the other side of Terry, obscured from his sight, and they sounded too feminine to be anyone's but Melody's. He wished he could see Doc from here, wished he could see the look on his face—bask in it a little—but there was nothing to balance out that soft, injured moan and squeal coming from Melody, and it cut him to the core.

He had to dig deep within himself then, for it seemed like almost everything this week had piled itself together into some leviathan thing that lay casually over-top his values, and pinned them soundly to the bottom of his heart. The terrible feeling of not knowing, not believing, and not truly accepting what had happened to him, and why it had happened. It was a truly monstrous thing that had lived in the pit of his gut, as of late, and told him in no uncertain terms to keep his head low. And for some reason, he'd listened, too ashamed of the what might've been, and the unfortunate consequences of his own rash actions to dare do otherwise.

Ash Ketchum had come very close to dying over the past week, he realized, and it was not due to lack of food, lack of sleep, or even the fatigue and painful overexertion that he was having to cope with now. Had he let this go on for one second longer without saying something—doing something—he was almost sure he really would have died. Ash Ketchum would've passed on, even if this physical body had completed it's task, and left the mud-pit.

Because Ash Ketchum didn't let things like this happen. Ash Ketchum always, always stood up when something wasn't right, and this was far from right. Glen, Terry, they were okay guys, even if they ran off at the mouth a little. Melody was strong willed, and a bit arrogant, but she was essentially good. He was sure even Doc had redeeming qualities, though he had no real idea what they might've been.

He felt the words swell in his mouth, ready to fly from it like the righteous opening volley of a retaliatory attack—yes, that fit nicely—a retaliatory attack on this harsh, cruel invader of his homeland of inner solitude, surety, and comfort that this week long endeavor into corps life had been for him.

And words did fly, swiftly and sharply, but they weren't his.

"You're some sort of monster!" Terry exclaimed, with a harshness wrought of both pain and avarice without any reasonable outlet. "You're going to kill one of us! What the hell is this stupid course supposed to be about, anyways? So far we haven't learned anything- except how to be miserable! You want one of us to die?"

It didn't seem that far-fetched, at least not to anyone who was in the pit. Every one of them was shaking to the foundations with the strain and the effort of holding the log over their heads, and it didn't seem to Ash that he'd ever hit this level of exertion before. It seemed that one of them just might succumb at any moment.

Surge only regarded the comment with a sort of contemptuous disregard that told them that Terry's concern was nowhere near the mark. The seriously unimpressed look he favored them all with right then told Ash, at least, that in no uncertain terms, that Surge could have come right down there and relieved the lot of them of their burden, just to show them what sissies they were being. Rather than say so, though, he just laid on the misery.

Surge had been all barks and snarls so far, so it seemed a little disconcerting to them that he would suddenly speak so evenly. Maybe that was why it hit Ash so hard. "I have never, in the sixteen years I've been teaching this course, seen such an unsatisfactory group of young people as you five. Those of you who do show any measure of skill or aptitude waste it trying to compete with one another, and those of you who just might be able to get by on tenacity alone waste all of that on griping. These courses and exercises are supposed to teach cooperation, efficiency, and stamina. Instead, you intentionally sabotage my training, and each other in ways I've never even imagined, and I was pretty sure I'd seen it all. You've turned this whole program into a mockery, and that ends today. I've tried tried taking things away, I've tried working you to the bone. And while none of you have done anything outrageous enough for me to eject you from the program, I'm out of options.

"So, either I'm going to get blood from a stone, or I'm going to keep squeezing until I get rid of you. Either way, I'm going to walk away from this with with an operational squadron, and not this miserable bunch of slobs I've had to watch all week." Surge harrumphed, deeply resigned. "So If you think I'm a monster who's doing this for his own satisfaction, and it makes you want to climb out of that pit, RTB, and pack your shit up, please Iuakea, stop wasting everyone else's precious time, and do so."

So that was it, then. It was all out there on the table. Surge wanted them to give up. None of them were surprised when the Terry and Glen both did. The Log practically slammed down onto the remaining three's shoulders as the two islanders clambered up out of the muddy pit, and were ushered away by D.I.s.

Ash hadn't even considered the possibility that he could just quit. He'd thought of it as somehow more binding than that, but the Pokemon Corps was just a peace-keeping service, not unlike the Rangers. It was an elective vocation, not a branch of the military. He felt a little silly, when he stopped to think about it. He could've backed out of this any time he'd wanted, with just a word. He could've saved himself the heartache and the misery, and all this tearing, searing pain that wracked every fiber of muscle he had, currently. Hell, he could dump his end of the log, and use what little strength he had left to haul himself out of here, and be safe and sound at home in just a few days time.

But as good as that sounded, as crushed and defeated as he felt, as ready to concede and shrink away as he was, he knew, even as he watched Terry and Glen bail out on them, that he couldn't. He heard, and saw clearly for the first time, Melody, who's visage seemed somehow as saddened as he ever remembered seeing anyone, and as angry-ugly as any hard-ass DI he'd seen all week. It wasn't the way she was looking at Glen and Terry, that scathed him, because that look seemed more than just upset. It seemed somehow Like she'd accepted from the beginning that this was inevitable, but she had been hoping against hope. There was a misery there, certainly, but it was nothing compared to the look she gave him.

There was just so much expectation there-and how could there not be? He was, if how she claimed to feel was true, a proven hero, right? Her look said so much to him, teetering there between desperately hoping for confirmation that he truly was what she believed he was, and absolute resignation in the face of one final discontentment, after the loss of her compatriots. Both she and he, it seemed, were aware that if he left, there wasn't a chance in hell that the remaining two Echo recruits alone would be able to hold the log up, no matter how strong Doc was, and her look told him more than anything, that she was counting on him—desperately counting on him—to stay.

In that moment, standing there, both their faces covered in mud and streaked with sweat and hot, agony-fueled tears, something silently passed between them.

With her expression alone, she was calling upon him to be that hero again,and without really intending to, without even being cognizant of what he was doing, he had somehow already accepted the responsibilities of that mantle.

Yes, Ash Ketchum lived.

His head wanted more than anything to get up and climb out of that hole, and to get the hell out of here as fast as he could, because every second in this place was breaking him, little by little. His head could validate running away, and had been trying to, for nearly a week. It might've seemed like cowardice, but this was getting him nowhere, and earning him nothing. He could limp away from a lost battle with Doc, and forget about his stupid pride. His head told him that, but his heart...

His heart heard those silent pleas for help in her eyes, and held his legs fast. He had grown a lot, he knew, but there were still parts of him that could only surrender so much. He could rely on pragmatism to a point. It was the smart, adult thing to do, to walk away from a conflict slanted in the oppositions favor. It was responsible to look after yourself, keep out of trouble. It had been a lapse of those things that had gotten him here, in this situation, and into this mess. A heavy dose of pride and arrogance, in a moment of blind fury. It wasn't going to be pride that held him here, though. Ash Ketchum still held on to what made him who he was, at his core.

Melody and he had nearly turned on each other like hungry Houndour today. And truthfully, though they'd had their differences since meeting up again, he could tell that these were Melody's conviction on the line, and that no amount of stubborn tenacity on her part was gonna keep that log in the air, if he backed out now.

He thought about how hopeless and dejected he'd felt after losing faith in himself in Sinnoh. He'd given it everything, and not just come up short, but failed to even place within the bracket.. He knew that there was nothing more demoralizing, nor painful than to fall so short of par, when your sights were set for success. He wondered if having someone else to blame for his lack of success would've made it better. If they failed this... whatever it was—test, objective,punitive measure—Melody could almost certainly pin the blame on terry and glen, and almost certainly, they would be deserving of it. Still, he thought, that did come with the converse alternative that success, the same as failure was likewise out of her hands, at least to some extent.

All Ash knew was that he didn't want to be party to another person's misery, for any reason, if he could help it, especially when it hit so close to home. The truth of it, was that here and now, they needed to work together as a team and as a unit, even if they, for the most part, hated each other's guts.

The Pokemon Corps was just about the most awful thing he could think of, but maybe he could tough it out for a little longer if it meant doing good by Melody.

He would just have to suck it up. Ash Ketchum wouldn't stand idly by while someone's dreams got stomped on, even if doing otherwise meant he had to cooperate with Doc. He just hoped he could get Doc to cooperate with him.

He lifted his legs in tandem, stomping downward to gain a surer foothold. He was glad he'd tied his boots so tightly, because the muck nearly pulled them off regardless. He heaved the log up off his shoulders, and pushed it up as high as he could, which wasn't very high at all, but seemed more than enough to reassure the other two, who likewise made an effort to duplicate his move.

Melody's grimace could not have lessened, in light of the sheer weight she was hefting, but something about her stare told him that she appreciated the effort.

Doc's sudden groan of agony struck them both by surprise though, and they began to falter as the largest of them swayed sideways in the mud, bared sidelong by the weight of the log he could no longer support with both arms.

Ash could see his right arm slump grotesquely at the shoulder, and wrist flopping uselessly to the mud, even past Melody who was nearly dunked below the mud with the sudden sway, the surface rushing suddenly up to her neck.

He looked up to the log over his head, and did the only thing he could do. When it rolled to the side, he refused to yield to it's inertia, and instead pulled it. He pulled it so hard and so sharply that Doc simply lost his one-handed grip on it, and it came crashing down onto his neck and back, as it hunched him low.

It didn't feel as painful to Doc as he knew it likely was. He felt numb, now, mostly. A sharp pop of searing pain had preceded a numbness. A dull, cold and unsettling sensation had washed throughout his body, emanating from his shoulder that he dared not inspect too closely. The sensible part of him that was still there, felt that he must've been lapsing into a state of shock.

To force himself back into sensibility, he took a look around trying to find something to focus on, seeing as how he could only manage to cradle the log there in the crux of his neck, having not the strength to shrug it off. Still, Ash yelled at him. "Don't let go!" he screamed. "Do_ not _let go!" Ash didn't have to say what it would mean if he didn't. It hardly mattered, though. The log would likely push him under the mud, before he could get out from under it. He was just so...distracted.

How was Ash holding up all that weight on his own? Melody was practically buried in the mud and likely concussed aside from that, and so desperately lacking the good sense to properly apply what little strength she might've had left. For that matter, what strength could Ash still have possessed? He was holding up what had to amount four or more times his own body weight at this point, which just didn't seem possible, much less likely, given the conditions. And where the hell was that blue flicker coming from?

He didn't even recognize it as a person anymore, once the slow, stupid feeling fully took hold of him, but he kept seeing that blue color, on and off, flaring up in a set of eyes across from him. Such a mad-dog, piercing blue. Now he could swear it was there again, disconcerting and bright, even though he knew the kid had beady little brown eyes. When he blinked, and tried to look closer, it was gone.

"Help me!" Ash's face screamed, voice ragged with strain and effort.

The face, reddened and filthy screamed it's plea again, and a third time, before he straightened his back, and looped his good arm over log to keep it steady, taking back his end of the burden. Though he didn't have the presence of mind to know it, he'd hefted it just high enough for Melody to get back under it, and add her own limited reserve of strength back to the effort.

The didn't see Surge's look become one of contentment, or hear him shout for his D.I.s to, "Get my people out of there." All they knew was that suddenly, their heavy burden flew away, and they were being lifted up and out of that awful place. Doc and Ash both lost consciousness almost immediately after.

Melody only had the strength left to limp along, watching as Ash' boots scuff awkwardly along in the dirt behind him. Two D.I.s carried his limp frame along, one hunched under each arm to keep him upright. Beside, Doc bobbed up and down on a stretcher, one arm in a tightened canvas sling.

Halfway back to the compound proper, she stopped and threw up. There was nothing in it—save watery bile and more than a little inadvertently swallowed mud—but her body protested its presence just the same.

She swooned coming back to her feet, and a massive arm caught her before she careened into one of the D.I.s carrying Ash along. Surge stooped and collected her in a firefighter's carry, and laden with the three fallen young people, the Corpsmen returned to base.

* * *

A/N:Yes, I know, Synchronize doesn't really work that way, (technically neither does Confusion) but fuck it, it made for an interesting little battle, so I rolled with it.

"_Uh, not really, it was pretty much like all your other battles: Repeated uses of the same status effect, followed by convenient lapse of judgment on part of the antagonist, and miraculous win on part of the protagonist."_

-Sigh- Quit busting my fuckin' balls, alright?

Anysomehow, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I really do want to say that the updates will be coming along more steadily, but yanno, fool me once and all that. Either way, I hope everybody enjoyed it, and is looking forward to the conclusion of this arc, come next chapter.


	15. Chapter XV

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Will the mystery surrounding Team Nebula's much talked-about Guest unravel once the PLF shows their hand? Can Ash and Doc come to terms and move ahead in the Pokemon Corps without coming to blows yet again? As Misty siezes the reigns of her pokemon team, will some prove too meek to stand alongside her?

A/N: AHHHHHHH-fuck! It's done! Yeah! So, lots of stuff, lots of stuff. I've been getting my ass kicked by life, no need to boo-hoo about it, and pour my soul out to you, just know that I'm not losing interest in the fic, and all this delaying is not intentional. Just very busy and worn out. I'm actually pretty pumped at the moment, though. This chapter was fun to write, so I hope everyone enjoys it.

**WARNING!**

**Uh, just know that this chapter gets violent, pretty fast. Like, literally, if you read much further past this line, you're going to be exposed to it. I wouldn't normally say anything about it, but I imagine some people are more squeamish than I am about it, and I don't want it to seem abrupt. It's not grindhouse shit or anything and if you've seen one R-rate horror movie, I doubt you'll lose your lunch, but you know, the moment I don't say something is the moment someone cries about raplhing all over their keyboard. Also, I don't know if this will be all that frequent, but know that the story won't shy away from this sort of thing in the future, since it is meant to be of a darker tone, overall. There will still be lighthearted bits, but they will be contrasted, and not lightly. I don't intend to change the rating, at least for now, but perhaps I will, if it is brought to my attention that I should.**

**/WARNING!**

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XV**

"Tables Turn"

Holiday, felt apprehensive about the possibility of his exposure, to say the least, as he and Grayson, curiously silent on the matter, descended alongside with Kazuo, through the final security blockade and into the deeper recesses of the reaction labs. He swallowed it back down into his stomach though and reclined against the rear support-rail, his face showing all the apathy and casual distaste he'd always shown.

The ride down was even more disturbing. A descent into total darkness, it was a study on elevator phobia, minus the gut-lurching free-fall. The overhead speaker died first, ceasing it's emission of free-form jazz. When the lights gave out, it was all but expected. They even flickered a bit before plunging them into blackness. Holiday snorted. "There's gonna be somebody in a hockey-mask standing there when the door opens, isn't there?"

Nobody in the elevator laughed. A fingertip reached out and touched a glowing red disk set in the wall. The 'Emergency Stop' button, Holiday realized, as his stomach felt the deceleration and flopped over.

He swallowed, thankful nobody could see his face. He expected Grayson to open up with it, right then and there, but there was only silence for the longest time.

And then, confusingly, there was pain.

Something buried itself in his calf and slid, hot and fast up his leg to mid-thigh, before he twisted himself away and bashed hard against the opposite wall. Whatever it was tumbled noisily across the floor after him and deftly wriggled between the fumbling limbs of his blind, poorly executed defense. The sharp, angry thing dug into his shoulder—this time, burrowing deep.

The pain was so sharp and sudden that he could not have said what he did, restricted as he was in the closeness and darkness. Probably flail and kick and cry out in pain, helplessly, at first. When he got hands on whatever it was, though, his temperament changed, darkly.

There was banging and thumping all around him, and something hit him solidly in the ribs, and once in the face, even as he clung tightly to the wriggling, pointy thing in his hands and pried it off of him, but it didn't deter him even a bit. The thing in his grasp took to cutting and stabbing at his arms, but all the same he rolled over on it, and pinned it between himself and the ground. With both hands he jerked it sharply across the floor of the elevator into the wall.

When he stood, rearing away from the stunned thing in the darkness, part of him wanted to stagger away, across the small compartment to nurse his wounds, yet a bigger part—the part that had awakened the moment he'd gotten his hands on it, the moment he'd regained control—guided him otherwise. He descended on it instead, finding it with the bottom of his shoe and then stomping on it, raising his leg high and bringing it down with all of his weight and more as he hopped slightly in the draw-back, then used a double-handed grasp on the support-rail to speed the descent. He did it again and once more, viciously. On the third time, he felt his knee hit his own chin solidly in the awkward motion, and the only thing that kept him from biting his tongue was that his teeth were clenched tight in a grimace of wrath.

The thing stabbed back feebly after the first blow, but the second stomp hit something hard and cracked it audibly, while the third hit something softer that busted under his foot like a plastic bag full of jelly. Half of whatever it was came away clinging to his shoe. There was no forthcoming attack afterward.

It was an unbelievably loud bang that stole him back to reality, nearly deafening him when sound and light exploded into the elevator from the muzzle of a gun. A flash-frame of Kazuo, standing tall, as Grayson cringed away from him, blood arcing from his arm. A second snapshot of the man's head furrowing open lit his periphery, as the hot blood from the first bullet-wound hit him across the chin. Like a physical blow, it pushed him to his rump.

It all happened in the frame of a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity passed since the lights had gone out. Still, by comparison, he was content to sit in the darkness. Plus, he was in no hurry to open his mouth, in case there was another bullet waiting to take off most of his face, so he didn't say anything smart-assed. At least for a while.

"Are you still alive?"

He was unsure of how to answer. For a minute, he thought about staying silent, and just letting Kazuo think whatever he wanted. But a man like Kazuo wasn't just going to walk away and leave the matter at that, even if such were the case. Even he couldn't imagine the implications. So, given that he was as likely to die either way, he spoke up.

"No," he said, then winced, feeling a cut well up near the corner of his mouth.

Kazuo only grunted. Holiday flipped open his Xtranciever, and turned on a flash-light function, bathing a circular portion of the corner in white light. A sickle-shaped spatter of blood ran down to Grayson, or at least what remained of the man, face down on the carpet that was wicking up dark fluid. Kazuo stood over the man, back to him, sliding the lethal steel device that he'd many days ago appropriated, back into the confines of his suit-jacket. He didn't look like he'd taken much of a beating.

He looked at himself. Tens of shallow but ragged cuts ran up to his elbows, and his shoulder had wept blood nearly down to his belt. He could feel the stickiness under his shirt and jacket. The fabric of his pant-leg was split up to his knee, and his sock was soaked red. All legacy of Drilbur's spiny claws. Gobs of pink gore clung to his shoe.

He spun to the opposite corner, and saw what had attacked him.

Grayson's Drilbur, lay bust open in the middle, all of it's insides splayed open by crushing force, one of it's drill-tipped arms mangled and shattered against the wall. He panned back to Grayson, and then back to the mess he'd made of the man's Pokemon

He didn't feel an ounce of sympathy for either of them. In fact, he felt elated, in a way. With a few cuts and a split-second of gut-wrenching fear, it seemed as though he'd paid his own blood-debt—escaped what would've surely meant the fulfillment of all the threats Kazuo had held over his head these past weeks. Now, it seemed as though he was completely off the hook. He almost laughed, so pleased was he over the way things had worked themselves out He would have, in outright amusement, if Kazuo hadn't interrupted him.

"Bring that light closer." Kazuo said, as he stooped near the fallen man, and rolled him over.

Holiday complied, and lit the corpse again, moving to stand, and nearly failing miserably at it. Adrenaline waning, his wounds came to life in a more serious way than they had prior to that point. The pain staggered him, and he collapsed to his good knee for a moment, before pulling himself upright with the aid of the arm-rail.

When he finally managed to provide adequate lighting to the scene, Kazuo was working his hand down into the collar of the man's overalls, and after a moment of work, tugged at the clothing beneath. An unusual, and seemingly anachronistic garment, came forth.

A long expanse of cloth that he came to understand was a woolen tabard, bearing a shield crest, after a moment of confused inspection.

Holiday made a face. "The fuck?"

"An azure P and Z combatant, over a split field of Argent and Sable. The arms of the Plasma King; Team Plasma's emblem." Kazuo explained, simply, throwing the tabard casually over the man's face, to serve as a death-shroud.

"I didn't think Team Plasma was still, like," he fumbled for the right phraseology, "a thing," he finished lamely.

"They aren't," Kazuo said with a shrug. "Some of their men are still loyal to the colors. They only just call themselves something different, now."

Holiday didn't buy that. "Who wears a tabard?"

Kazuo turned and looked him over pointedly, at which Holiday rolled his eyes. The look said plainly that his own attire was somewhat more unusual than that question warranted. Holiday didn't see it as the same, thought.

Before he could complain, though, Kazuo bent to the floor and picked something up. It turned out to be a long, pale knife. Almost a foot and a half in length, thin, and, as it turned out, non-metallic.

Holiday reached out an clicked a fingernail against it. He cringed at the sensation. "Ceramic."

Kazuo made an affirmative grunt. "Won't show up on a metal-detector."

He tried to put it in my chest, but he missed. Luckily, he's not the man who owned this blade, or we'd both likely be dead," Kazuo added solemnly, slipping the blade into his jacket, alongside the pistol.

Holiday arched a brow. "Do what now?"

"Only three knives like this one," the Nebula Boss explained. "Three men who wield them. They're all the same."

The way Kazuo said it, Holiday wondered somehow if he were talking about the blades or the men. "So who's is it?"

"Mine," Kazuo said, unblinking, as he reached out to tap the emergency stop button once again, and being the elevator trip to a close. "Someone sent it back to me."

Holiday asked no more. That way was shadow and deeper darkness, still. He was sure it was a road best untraveled. When the elevator finally clunked down the to the bottom of the shaft, Just the small jostle made him quake. He felt light-headed.

"You're injured."

"Oh," Holiday snorted, gingerly prodding at the wound on his shoulder "Am I? I hadn't noticed. I thought this hole had always been here."

Kazuo, as always, ignored his sarcasm. "Grayson was a PLF sleeper agent, who I had suspected for some time. I purposely went over the top with my suspicions of you, even going so far as to let several of my men see you beaten and bloodied and under my custody, in order to bait him out of his guise."

There was no apology that hung unsaid, and Holiday was positive he didn't want one, though he did ask mockingly if that meant he was off the hook.

"It doesn't." Kazuo still had his doubts.

The two stepped from the elevator when it opened. The only egress was a vacuous expanse containing yet more darkness. Casting his light out ahead, Holiday, alongside his boss, made his way down into the labs, walking nearly three hundred feet of empty hallway, to where they eventually came to a shielded door. Thankfully, this one was not filled with concrete.

Shadow Pokemon Reaction Chamber, the door read.

Within, Holiday knew, was what Cipher and Nebula referred to as such, but it was a device he had contrived and built as something with slightly different intent.

"After you." Kazuo said, after keying their entry.

Without argument, Holiday strode within, casting the light around, until he found a bank of light and power-switches set into an electrical box, all toggled to their off position, save for one. He noted as he hobbled to it, that Kazuo did not follow him within, but he hardly cared. He was close to his objective, after so long, and something much like excitement prodded him onward. With a sweep of his hand, he flicked all of them on.

The room sprang to life in phases. First, the gigantic hum of machinery, then the condensing whirr of computer systems, then the flickering glow of fluorescent lights. The room was massive and circular, surrounding a smaller circular room within it, framed on all sides by what appeared to be glass, at first sight, but he recognized soon thereafter as fused quartz. Currently, the interior chamber was shrouded with inert gas, as he would've expected it to be, when occupied.

Kazuo stood outside the room, and bided. He made effort not to do anything so telling as lock eyes on the swirling chamber within, but neither did he move to confront it. He couldn't guess what was now in there, any more than Holiday could, he was sure. The thing that he'd placed inside it, the time-ravaged corpse it once had been, couldn't possibly have been the thing working that light.

The light that was blinking at him, even now.

L-E-A-V-E-N-O-W-L-E-A-V-E-N-O-W-L-E-A-V-E-N-O-W

Kazuo had seen it the moment he'd opened the door. Something was wrong. It seemed to him as though it had made an effort to save Holiday's life, but now that he'd brought the admin before it, it didn't seem as pleased. Or was it just that it wanted him gone? Was there more to this than he knew?

He put one testing foot through the door, and grimaced. The instant he crossed the threshold a shrill tone, like a scream erupted in his skull and forced him to step back outside; an impenetrable wall of silent sound.

Holiday took to the console without complaint, though, and rapidly keyed it back to it's fully-powered state, ignoring Kazuo's hesitance nearly as much as the man himself was trying to play it off. It seemed that either Holiday did not hear the noise, or was simply unaffected by it.

"This is all fucked up," the admin commented with a snarl. "Who was working on this?"

"Me," Kazuo admitted with a sedentary grace, hiding his confusion.

The automated script for the suppression system was written in Python, but someone had tried to alter it with what Holiday supposed was a reasonable knowledge of Pascal. They were both sophisticated algorithmic languages, he supposed, but there were no points for trying in computer programming. He withheld a few sharper jibes, and instead said, "Stick to shooting people in the face. You do a much prettier job of it."

Within a few moments he'd re-written the bad segments of code, muttering under his breath. "Void alx, bracket, int x, close bracket, brace, if, bracket x equals equals one, close bracket, brace, assert bar, bracket, close bracket, semicolon, close brace..."

When he was done, he saved, closed and re-executed the batch file. Kazuo could see all the lights on the chamber power-down, then spring to life again. This time there was no flickering, or blinking, or hum. The repeating message became a benign glow, the swirling gasses continued to swirl and nothing else made itself apparent.

Testingly, he edged back into the room. The sound was gone. His stride was casual as he made his long-awaited entry. Holiday, if he realized he'd solved a problem at all, other than sloppy code-work, didn't make note of it. He just plopped into a lab-chair and fingered his wound. Still, the man rounded on him as he approached.

"I didn't build this thing to be a prison," Holiday said with a sigh.

Now, he couldn't quite muscle down his surprise and that, Holiday did seem pleased with.

"The chamber was built to cause interference in the field-effect observed surrounding most Pokemon, particularly psychic-type Pokemon, but also with particular attention paid to those emitted by many "legendary" Pokemon, and affect those fields by bombardment with high amplitude delta-waves. In doing so, the chamber and it's accompanying mechanisms siphon off quantities energy from that field for storage or use. Not to serve as a suppression chamber. The unfortunate fact that no such storage device was ever completed for it, is irrelevant."

"You're the builder, then?" Kazuo asked, folding his arms.

"Inventor, designer, builder..." Holiday seemed to stop himself from saying more, but gave a flourish, none the less.

"The reports I have suggest that the chamber can suppress the will of a Pokemon, for whatever that's worth. It all seems to be very non-scientific, but the dossier would have the reader believe that Pokemon emerged from the chamber without emotion and were somehow stronger because of it, yet were easily controlled by Cipher."

Holiday shrugged. No sense lying. "It has been known to do that, as well."

"Also, these reports claim that a man named Ein-"

"I built this machine in graduate-school. Ein was just an undergrad, one of two assistants on the project. We put the chamber through eight months of mock-up studies, with success after success after success. From beginning to end, the thing worked exactly as initial simulations predicted it would. We siphoned clean energy from Pokemon, in kilowatt numbers well in excess of our trial goals. Ein remained unsatisfied. He claimed to have developed procedural mock-ups that would double, even triple the efficiency of the siphoning process. Foolishly, I assumed that twelve years of education would mean the man knew his ass from a hole in the ground, and allowed this. Of course, there were immediate and catastrophic repercussions, and I was hospitalized for several months—well beyond the requisite deadline. When I was released, the machine, my research and my assistant were gone. Ein, as inept as he was, likely failed to impress anyone in the private sector with the design and so turned it into this bastardized thing you read about, to get someone to take it off his hands. You notice he's no longer here, and neither is Cipher."

Kazuo stared at Holiday for a long time. He didn't know that he was being told the truth, any more than he knew it was an explicit lie, though he would not have put money on either. He heaved a breath. "For now, it will serve. What I need is a containment cell, not a battery.

Holiday tutted in annoyance. "Actually, it's more like a generator than a-"

Kazuo rolled his eyes. Right now he needed a scientist, not a comedian. "Go clean yourself up, Holiday."

* * *

Ein expected the Generalissimo to explode, as the remote EKG flatlined, but instead, he grew quiet. Their last operative within the walls of Realgam tower had expired—painfully, if he was interpreting the readings correctly—and it would be months, perhaps years before they could implant a new sleeper with a reasonable alibi. Ein knew that. He braced for the worst.

"The time to strike has come, but it has not passed," Ghetsis said, all quiet certainty, catching Ein off-guard. "It would not behoove us to allow the iron to grow cold and we cannot allow one setback to forestall the Liberation."

The Pokemon League nerve center overseas was all abuzz, he'd heard. Nothing loud, nothing official. But it was clear that the climate had changed into one of tense anticipation. With the proper applique, he could easily turn that paranoia into panic. He'd even heard from a fairly reliable source that the Indigo League champion was sending out an unofficial probe to look into PLF activities on the mainland, as though they were some overt thing that a person might see through binoculars.

They were such fools. Fools with a considerable amount of power and wealth, but fools none the less.

Ghetsis thought it over for a moment, before turning directly to face Ein. "We'll need to activate a foreign cell. We can't afford to have this linked back to us, directly. Not at this stage. We still need to get our hands on that data, before we can directly oppose the league. I believe you have someone "

"I do have one operative I can tap already in place, yes."

"Do it."

Three thousand miles away, a phone rang.

J clawed herself into an upright position in bed and refused her own desire to puke into her lap, as she forced her body to remember what breathing was like, and how much differently it worked, than what it seemed to want to accomplish. Even though she was now several months removed from the incident, a part of her... perhaps many parts, still rested at the bottom of Lake Valor.

She puked anyways, and as she tried to stop the brackish fluid behind clenched teeth, and feebly police away what dribbled slowly down her chin, she betrayed a miserable, plaintive sob.

Asphyxia followed her in her sleep.

The crushing saline pressure of that deep blue shale-lake, the swallowed shards of glass raking their way down her throat as she tried to gulp for air that was hundreds of meters away in any one of a million different directions she couldn't discern through sight or sensation, they were all there waiting, when she closed her eyes. A perfect recreation of that roiling cauldron of twisted black steel and slicing, grinding glass that was invisible and, at any rate, a secondary fatality to drowning.

The conditions were perfect, when she was asleep. It was dark, just like that terrible, underwater hell that would have—should have—been her grave, every time she closed her eyelids. Even when she'd clawed at her own neck, in panic and delirious stupidity, starved for respiration and battling against complete lack of sense and depleted lungs that were begging her to breathe in the liquid she couldn't even see all around her, if she could find nothing else; her hands hadn't cast so much as a minute shadow in her eyes. Not even a gradation of light in that midnight blue, where she only knew her eyes were open by the gritty buffeting of glass against her corneas.

Her death had been dark, and it had been solitary.

But it was the sound, mostly, that scared her. It was what she imagined the inside of a blender would sound like. A million, million splinters of debris, the crushed and contorted remains of her ship all being twisted and rent apart and smashed back together again by the after-effects of the Galaxy Bomb, and the water-pressure of Lake Valor's immense, sink-hole depth. A roar, like some unseen beast, some old, forgotten Pokemon god, dispassionate and baleful, bellowing out a scream that was shaking the whole of Sinnoh, in lust for her demise. And that sound, that terrible, turbulent, droning—her personalized tinnitus—was always there, waiting to build to a roar when the ambiance was just right.

She slid herself from the bed the way a Crustle might, each limb tentatively perching and balancing from the bedside to the nightstand, to the floor, mindful of her awkward and ungainly weight. She made her way to the bathroom and emptied her mouth into the sink, before fumbling with the faucet.

Her nightmares were frequent and deeply unsettling. She did not craft some self-sympathetic illusion that they would end soon, or that they would get better in the mean-time.

Water hissed down from the spigot, and washed away the rust colored bile. She cupped up a bit to wet her face before shutting it off.

J had never allowed herself to care so much about anything, that she could not stand to lose it. People, Pokemon, Possessions. She would cast any number of these things away so long as she could stand to benefit from it. Still, she had never been a woman free of contempt, whatever her pragmatism.

Tightly grasping the porcelain basin, she huffed and heaved, as though trying to regain the breath she'd lost so many months ago.

Her life had been spent in the pursuit of her only love; the one true icon of power, and her chosen opiate: Currency. People always wanted it, and you could get anything at all in exchange for it, provided you had enough of the stuff. Neither Pokemon nor people could say the same. A person could only hope to put so many Pokemon to practical use. People were a liability, no matter how you looked at it, but money...

Money was something you could never have too much of and she, just like everyone else, was always looking to make more of it, no matter how much was aquired. Therein, it had always been worthwhile—enjoyable even.

But now, larger even than the lust in her heart, was some blackened lesion of gnarled loathing that made sickness and disgust of all else, some infarction of the tissue that would simply not let anything anything through. Just a festering anger that boiled over, trying to balance out the terror and misery that lurked inside her brain.

There had once been a boy, a thorn in her side, really, who had time and again stood in her way, foiled her plans and cost her vast sums of money—something she surely would've killed for at the best times. Now though, he seemed like such a trifle, a waste of time and nerve by comparison. That old grudge, as real as it once had been, was nothing beside this new feeling.

And why should it have been? It wasn't as though there was anyone else alive who knew what it was like to begrudge their own murderers! That's what they were! Mesprit! Uxie! They'd killed her!

The dead should not have needed begrudge anyone, at least not in the way of the living. Not the way she did. There was nothing that could relieve this toxic spike of anger and malefaction inside her. No vengeance, no reciprocal satisfaction would ever be enough. Even if the Lake Trio had showed their faces that very moment and offered their throats to her gnashing teeth and choking fingers, it wouldn't change the fact that she was now something not quite living.

Good sense, and the logical words of many, many doctors had told her otherwise, but J knew she was dead. As dead as something that walked and talked could be.

She snarled in the back of her throat, as she looked upon her reflection.

More machinery than femininity, most would've found even her nude, narrow form corpulent, even while dressed—but especially so in that state—given that it laid bare the reason for her unnatural return from the deep.

Her arm, which was customarily laden with the petrification cannon for which she had gained such a frightful reputation was now more armament itself than living appendage. Her cannon remained, grafted grotesquely into her forearm in mockery of itself, above a harsh, claw-like manipulator of steel and latex, which though it did appear to have five fingers, operated more like the crushing talons of a Braviary than the lithe, dextrous digits she had once owned.

Hex bolts erupted through scarred and distended flesh in clusters, from her knees to her neck, sites where undoubtedly some internal machination replaced it's destroyed likeness, resembling boils and pox of aluminum and tungsten. Alongside them, hydraulic tubing, served as new musculature and ligament, black and shiny against her opaque white skin.

Not even her face had gone untouched—and she asked herself, why should it have?—her once smart, sharp, and entirely exceptional features marred by a hook-shaped plate that seemed all but bolted to the side of her face, running from the parietal segment of her skull, to the edge of her cheek, like the mandible of a Durant.

Her eyes were the worst. Not because they were strange, but because, to her, they were the most painfully forced replica. They no longer shimmered with an inner cunning or deviousness she had once enjoyed seeing in her reflection. Instead they shined with the sort of back-lit soullessness you might see in the store-front window of an overpriced department store, after-hours. Bright and pale, almost sterile blue. She'd have almost rather seen glowing red LEDs. At least that wouldn't have been so phony.

She flexed her arm. The new muscles bulged with a hardness and severity that she had never known. The steel of her new grasping appendage bit deeply into the basin and the rubberized grip would not fail. The overseas interest-group had invested a lot of money into this new body, however much she despised it.

She would have to go on this way, however. She would persist, out of sheer spite, even as this walking junk-heap—this Frankenstein's monster—because while she did not foolishly pretend that peace would come or that, eventually, she would grow to accept this or that, even more foolishly, she would ever be able to visit a satisfying vengeance on the ones who had done this to her, she knew that someone would always want her to do what she did best, just like the PLF did.

With a sharp crack a chunk the size of a dinner plate broke away in her grasp.

She doubted the money would bring as much joy anymore—what was money good for to a rotting pile of shit and scrap-metal?—but it would give her plenty of opportunity to spread her suffering around. Lots of Pokemon to capture, lots of men to recruit, lots of clients to parlay with. She'd make them all suffer as much as she could, and every day would just be a new opportunity to devise new ways to do that. She loathed this vessel that held her, but she would make the most of it.

Unsatisfied, she glared powerfully, and flexed harder, curling her triceps, and bearing down on the two-inch thick slab of ceramic. It would not slip away and she would not tire. She would never tire.

What she would put them through would never come close to what she dealt with, and it would never get her any closer to sanity, but...

There was a crackling sound as pressure built until her fingertips finally punched clean through, shattering the piece into crumbling fragments and powder.

...She would be in control. These people thought they owned her now, but they were wrong.

Her cross-transceiver rang again, for the third time, and it distracted her for a moment, drawing her gaze out and into the room she'd clambered out of, She'd left it set on top of the bed-covers, and left it there, ignored.

Feeling somewhat consolidated, she worked her way back out into her suite, and snatched ahold of it, flipping the redundant wrist-bound device open, and meeting the face who looked out of it with an open scowl. She said nothing.

Ein tried not to look away from what he'd created, out of either disgust, or propriety, as J stood there plainly, starkly undressed and all the more hideous for it. She seemed to him some macabre patchwork quilt, fashioned into an erotic rag-doll caricature. But he was a scientist and a physician. She did not raise unpalatable feelings of nausea in him, nor interminable guilt. He'd simply dredged up what was broken materiel and repaired it, in a way only he was capable. He'd fixed her. Improved her, in those regards for which she was implicitly useful. Moral implications and ethical ramifications were for lesser men.

He cursed under his breath when the sight of her still brought difficulty to remembering the code-phrase he was supposed to pass on to her.

"G-Gengar wait in the dark," he recited—the code-phrase to activate a unit for a particular activity in the service of the PLF.

She gave her expected reply in scratchy monotone syllables, with a voice that sounded like an over-used razor-strop, and made Ein shiver involuntarily. "Clefairy shadows make perfect hiding-spots."

"Toujou falls," Ghetsis commanded, from over Ein's shoulder. His clenched teeth said that he cared little for the fact that he'd breached ELINT protocol by saying the name of their target directly. It didn't matter. This line of communication was so heavily encrypted, he doubted even he could make sense of it, listening from the outside. "You have unlimited authority. Send a clear message," the Generalissimo commanded.

J felt the muscles of her face—what little muscles remained that actually belonged to her—twitch and wriggle with displeasure at those words. Who did these people think they were fucking with?

If the fragment of sink had burst in her hands, the transceiver stood no chance. It caved in and crumpled, plastic, circuit board in all, with only a spark of protest.

She would do their dirty work, no doubt. With relish, she would do it. But if any of them had an idea in their heads that she did not always enjoy unlimited authority, they clearly had more of an incorrect notion of her than she had thought.

* * *

Holiday hissed through his teeth, as the rotating tool worked it's way back and forth over the wound, using different apertures to fill the wound and cleanse it. The robotic armature flexed and swerved above him, following him unerringly as he flinched away in the high padded seat. After a set of disposable scalpels and hemostats had been brought to bear on him, excruciatingly, to remove pieces of debris from the wound too large to simply wash away, a searing ethyl solution flushed the ragged hole, and then a jet of styptic gushed into it's recess.

Both felt like lava. Rather than cool into pumice, though, the two liquids reacted with one another, and expanded into a semi-rigid foam, with roughly the same density as polystyrene that would ultimately soften into a pH-neutral bio-synthetic jelly that would fill the void until eventually his body absorbed it, and used the stem-cells and growth-promoting vitamins within the foam to rapidly heal the lost tissue.

The chemical reaction was endothermic, which did take away the burn of the antiseptic, but it made him feel like someone had poured his shoulder full of frozen pop-rocks, which made it anything but pleasant. Two crisscrossing printer heads then sutured a three inch patch of his flesh in a micro-weave of synthetic skin cells, that would take on the coloration of his natural pigment after a few hours. The same processes were used in the automated treatment of Pokemon, observed by most Pokemon Centers, though on a miniaturized scale.

Had he the presence of mind to, he would've marveled at how much like a machine the body was, that you could simply fix problems with it in much the same way you might a car, if you simply had the proper tools, and applied the correct materials. As it was, he was too busy crying like a baby.

He laid there for a long time, holding his lip under his teeth, and making a long f-sound, with tears leaking back into his ears. Until the automated surgeon clicked over past it's programmed wait time, and assessed him as a new patient who had taken up the seat in need of care. He rolled off the chair, desperately bailing out over the arm to escape the padded restraint ligature that grasped for him. He hit the tile floor with a hard flop, and lay there for a bit longer before embarrassment and anger made him clamber onto feet.

Wanting nothing more than to curse and shout, but fearful that it would turn into little more than a warbling moan of pain, he limped away. He found an adjoining locker-room, attached to this level's testing and examination room. Everything was in good repair and well-stocked he'd found, which was to be suspected, since Kazuo had likely moved all the workers from these levels of Realgam with no notice whatsoever, and barred them from returning. It wasn't surprising, then, when he found a vast amount of personal items and clothing from which to select his new garb.

He stripped off the blood-stained paper-gown, and rifled through a few lockers finding nothing of what he was interested in, and more. After coming to a disappointing realization that he was the only scientific-minded person in the world with a scrap of style, he had to settle for a set of gray slacks a few inches too long on the inseam, buckled to the last hole on a worn out brown leather belt, a dark navy button-down with an old-gold clip-on tie, and a white lab coat. Luckily, it proved that some woman who worked on this floor had been cursed with abnormally large feet, size 15 ½ from what he could see on the tongue—and so he was able to cram himself into some suitably decent cream-colored winklepickers, with only just a little effort. He clicked the toes together.

From his old ensemble, he was able to salvage his white gloves, which had miraculously gone unstained. All else though, was irredeemably besmirched with blood and gore, and in the case of the jacket and shuckle-neck, totally ruined. He would miss the bolero, but not the shoes. An hour and a half of squelching around in Pokemon guts was enough to last a lifetime. He could order some new ones later, he supposed.

He meticulously combed his hair with his switchblade comb, smelling of the carbolic suds released by his earlier chemical shower. It was really more meant for emergencies, he reflected, but hey, it worked in a pinch. While he was preening himself with the aid of a magnet-mirror stuck to the inside of a locker he'd looked through, he happened to glance upon a set of safety glasses set upon a compartment shelf, and placed them on his face. They proved too small, but the next locker he tried yielded a set more reasonably sized. He was pleased to find that they were prescription, as well, and nearly matched his own. They were wide, wrap-around jobs, mirrored and austere. He'd have preferred something a bit more on the obnoxious side. Wayfarers, tea-shades, or some neon green shutters. These would do, though. He sneered at himself in the mirror, popped both lapels of his lab-coat, then made pouty-lips his coy wink invisible behind the shades.

"Look out!" he screamed, slamming the locker shut, and leaving the locker-room "Hot stuff coming through!"

It was with that same sense of reverence that he barreled back into the main operation center, where Kazuo waited for him patiently, seated by the command console.

He felt...good. Despite his ordeal. He didn't exactly like travel, and the chance to be back in a machine-lab where he belonged felt like a welcome reprieve from that. Granted, he'd have rather been roughing it in the shit with Doc than getting stabbed and beaten, and mixed up in spy-games, but still, he had his health for the time being, whatever that turned out to be worth, and he also had a definite sense of vindication in having finally gotten to lay hands on his rightful possession again. Now all he had to do was convince Kazuo that whatever he had in here wasn't worth the carbon nano-tubes this chamber was built out of, and then he could start dismantling this baby and take it home piece by piece.

"Are you ready?" Kazuo asked, voice all silky stern.

"To see your little science-project, sure. Got my safety goggles and everything," he replied sarcastically, tapping his spectacles. "I'm ready for anything. Even a vinegar and baking-soda volcano."

Kazuo, unamused, turned to the console, and flipped a glass cover off a green button marked "Purge".

Holiday stepped up to the viewing panels and pushed his face against them childishly, refusing to behave with any of the decorum Kazuo seemed to expect. The stolid grin on his face faded, though as the gray shrouds of gas exhumed it's hidden occupant. Black, and massive at first, like the prow of a ship looming down upon him out of the fog, it's sheer presence forced him back a step. It wasn't until he realized that it wasn't moving at all, that he was able to step back.

He wiped away the face print, to get a better look at it. It just sat there in the trappings of the chamber, piping and tubes of origin and purpose only he truly understood, looking for all the words in his repertoire, indescribable.

It was not constructed in the way of any humanoid Pokemon or human itself, which, in the way of things, should not have been so difficult to accept. Truly, many Pokemon took on less natural, or for that matter, sensible shapes. This could not account for the stark contrast that those forms, however unusual, presented to this entity, as though the thing itself were from a time and place where none of the relevant aspects of Darwinian evolution—or even the more idiosyncratic necessities of Pokemon evolution, for that matter—seemed to hold any sway.

It could not have truly been all that different, he decided almost immediately, as he struggled desperately to look at the specimen before him with a critical and objective eye. There was a quality to it that seemed altogether aberrant and was at once, so strikingly malignant-looking that it gave him the impression of some movie-made anathema, ominously still until one was so fool-hardy as to turn their back on it.

It did resemble, in parts at least, the features of things to which he was more familiar, even if not all of those things were expressly living.

It had no legs of which to speak, that he could see; though perhaps there was some form of ambulation derived from the knot of root-like flagellum (which was only his best estimate of what the appendages actually were) at the base of it's bulbous body. Not one of these touched the ground, though whether that was by design or by current arrangement he was uncertain. Though, he could see now that it was not just piping and tubes holding the thing aloft, but also some form of hardened exuviae, that might've once been something like a lipid envelope, like some plasmids tended to posses.

In general, it's closes parallel in shape would've been an egg, though it's... for lack of a better word, he would simply call it a shell, was like an un-bloomed crocus, layered and heart-shaped with sinister curves that hinted at the benign. This layered corona of overlapping folds enclosed a cavity which housed another structure more rooted in the hard geometry of structure than the irregularity of form, be it natural or unnatural, and resembled a sort of bowing, hollow, obelisk; like a grandfather clock that had warped out of shape, and hunched forward.

Grandfather clock did seem an appropriate analogy since there was, in fact, a pendulum-like organ, or uvula structure that hung half-exposed within the stalk itself. It did nothing so contrite as to swing or tick, of course, though Holiday did have to wonder for a moment if he had actually wanted it to, just to lend a thread of familiarity to the creature. It held disturbingly motionless, much like the rest of it, however.

This 'stalk' seemed to be the anterior portion of the thing, since it seemed to bear a head of sorts—if you could consider such a thing sufficiently formed as to be called that!—being little more than a forward-facing protrusion at the top, bearing two rudimentary eyes. As he drew closer he could see that these were little more than photo-sensory disks. The organs themselves were so basic, that he doubted they were intended to provide any real form of sight. Certainly not anything stereoscopic, he reasoned, since the two eyes seemed specialized for entirely different jobs, even though they were parallel to one another.

Now that he noticed it, it really seemed that no part of the thing observed any functional symmetry, and in some places it seemed even to be bifurcated down the same line of growth, as though a single part of it might've been grown to observe two separate and exclusive functions and was perforated, so to speak, in readiness for the need to do both simultaneously.

"Well." Holiday said reluctant appreciation. "That's something, alright. Not sure what, but it's something."

Kazuo turned him aside by the elbow and pushed a stack of olive file-folders into his hands. "This is everything I have on it. I'll give you some time to look over it. I'll come back and see you this afternoon, and we can discuss your findings."

Holiday looked down at the folders, then up at Kazuo before seizing them. "Come back and see me in an hour."

* * *

Misty scratched behind her ear as she waited for the laser printer to chuff out the page. She was uncertain, of course, for how could she not be? This was a wild new direction to take her training in, and it would certainly be a shock to the systems of several of her Pokemon In fact, she was hoping it would be, for some of them. She had several tactics in mind for dealing with the less diligent amongst her Pokemon. Marill, she was sure, would need more attentive persuasion to take up the new regimen, and she was foresighted enough to fulfill that eventual need. She was not going to be easy on them, either.

She snatched up the paper, and barreled for the door to her office, snatching Ash's—her league cap from the end of her desk, and twisting it onto her head. Someone came in from the other side of the office door, pulling the handle out of reach, before she could get hold of it.

Parker stood on the opposite side of the threshold, looking at her reach toward nothing and grasp impotently thin air for a moment, before clearing his throat. The noise of the gymnasium roared in from behind him. It sounded busier than it ever had.

"Your Pokemon are ready for you," he stated plainly, but caught her eye as she weaved her neck to the side and stole a glance past him. "Brianna and Dianna are working with some of the aquarium-wing Pokemon, as well as your sisters' Pokemon Will they be in your way?"

Misty shook her head, as she watched the two girls hard at work in the gymnasium, coordinating drills and pointing out individual Pokemon for more specific instruction. Their flourishes were full of verve and energy and they seemed, to her, genuinely happy. They'd come in this morning with haggard faces, and drooping eyelids, sipping greedily from a tall can of energy drink they were passing back and forth, but that was seemingly all they'd needed.

"No, I was planning to work in the new arena."

"Very good, ma'am," Parker commented, but then looked slightly awkward, as though it was all he could do to keep himself from snapping a crisp salute.

She wasn't sure she'd ever get used to being called "Ma'am." She wasn't sure it was even appropriate, given that she wasn't even sixteen yet. Still, she didn't try to put Parker off of it, beyond looking as stricken as she was. It seemed to her that it would've been unprofessional and furthermore, rude to ask him to do otherwise.

Instead she nodded at him in deference and continued on her way, leaving the man to the tasks she'd laid out. She'd always at least professed to run a tight ship, and she expected that he would run an equally tight one in her place.

"Shall I send challengers to see you directly, or hold them here?" Parker asked, gently patting his clipboard against the khakis on his thigh, as he fell into step beside her.

Misty didn't see any reason why she wouldn't continue to take on challengers, but she didn't suppose that she had expressly laid that out. "I'll need an hour or so to set up, but following that, I should be ready to take on challengers." She'd set an early start to their routine—five AM—so she didn't expect to inconvenience anyone with the time she needed to herself and her Pokemon

She'd already set her own Pokemon aside, and told them to await her where she wanted them. She knew good and well that they wouldn't all be there, had she not asked Starmie to gather them all together, though. Marill would still be sleeping, more likely than not, unconcerned with training as she was. Gyarados and Kingler were equally likely to have been awaiting her presence since 5AM yesterday in an effort to out-perform one another. The others, aside from Staryu and Starmie were equally as likely to be otherwise preoccupied.

She was pleased to see them all waiting for her, though—in various stages of half-sleep though they might've been—bobbing up and down again in a row before her at the anterior end of the performance pool.

The performance arena was a massive thing, with colloseum style seating and a huge pool, nearly twice the length, width and depth of Olympic regulation. Several platforms, raised and lowered by hydraulic pumps could be elevated out of the water to create artificial islands, yet hid themselves flush against the bottom when unneeded, to create an uninterrupted expanse of open water.

They were all like specks in the illuminated arena, and that was good. They were all little things, as of yet, and if the arena itself could humble them, then it was all for the better.

"I've been watching all of you, for the past week..."

She didn't like having to take her Pokemon into hand, any more than she enjoyed being stern. But there was a time for sternness, she reflected, and that time was now. Things had taken a turn for the best as of late, so far as the prospects for the gym had gone, and it was time that conduct reflected such. This lackadaisical nonsense had to stop.

"You may think that I don't see what goes on when I'm not around, but I do. I see it, and I'm not happy about it." Her words were sharp because they had to be, not because that's how she preferred them. She felt her throat tighten, once she had said it. It was as though her conscience were trying to choke the words out of her, but she swallowed and pressed on. She put on a mask of displeasure, one that was all hard-featured authority.

"I realize that I can't expect you to conduct yourselves like champions on your own, because you're not," she added gravely.

The suddenly withered looks they all gave her, brought moisture to the corner of her eyes. She didn't want to be so harsh, not really—but she could not soften, nor could she be overly forgiving. She didn't enjoy handing out scolding, no more than she enjoyed receiving it, yet she did realize that some self-criticism was in order. She was thankful that she was cresting the hill, here, but she'd resolved that she would not bend.

She'd been especially careful to avoid direct eye-contact with Marill, who was already trying to catch her in a watery-eyed gaze meant to evoke sympathy. She knew it would, if she let it. Instead, she let her gaze slide over all of them, in turn, just long enough to make it clear that she was talking to all of them, but not long enough to bear witness to that realization's punishing after-effects.

"But it's not because you don't have it in you. It's just that so many different things motivate you, and what works for one may never work for the others. That's my job. That's what I am supposed to do. Trust me, I understand that I haven't been there to help you, the way I should have. I understand that you need me to be there the same way I need you to be here.

"But I'm not a champion, either. Just because I'm here to tell you what to do, and how to do it, doesn't mean that everything is suddenly going to go right. Things have gotten better for us, lately. So much better." They contribution Lance had made was enormous, and a large chunk of that had been dedicated to better facilities—something that was evident all around them. "But now is not the time to kick back and enjoy. We haven't accomplished anything."

She held up an electronic device in her hand, a touch-sensitive screen that was wirelessly synced with all the devices in the gym. She keyed up a document she had compiled earlier that morning, and held it up for all of them to see.

Three white numbers on a blue field. "This is the number of times we've won in the past year..."

She flicked her finger, bringing up a new digit, still in the triple digits, but notably larger. "This is the number of times we haven't."

There were more contrite looks and these coaxed out a few of the watery globes that clung to her lashes, and sent them sliding down her cheeks.

"These next months—these next weeks, especially—they will be hard. Some of you will hate what we have to do now, and you may like me a little less because of that, but I won't blame you for it. Reinventing yourself isn't supposed to be easy, and it certainly isn't supposed to be fun. But we have to accept the fact that for a long time we've just been getting by."

She didn't sniff, even though she felt like she needed to. She kept her mouth smashed into a thin line when it wasn't moving, and she made sure, that if nothing else, her eyes kept strafing them, wide with accusation.

"We've never been champions. We've been a rag-tag bunch of Pokemon with no real unifying force or drive, led by a girl who was either too busy or lacked enough focus to do anything about it," she said, biting the inside of her lip to keep it from quivering.

We've only ever been good, compared to the alternative. My sisters were the alternative and they ran this gym like a league-badge gift-shop!" her voice cracked a little, but she kept on.

I don't want us to be good if that's all that good means! want us to be something great—better than that, I want us to be the best. I want us to be so damn good that we make the elite four look like rookie trainers. I want us to be the kind of team that people don't just respect, or revere—I want us to be the sort of battlers that people dream of challenging, or the sort of team that people are afraid of challenging! The sort of team that's so far beyond what anyone else has to offer that when people talk about strong Pokemon or when they talk about great trainers, we're the first things that come to mind!" She realized she was practically screaming at them, but she didn't care.

"I don't just want us to win, I want us to overwhelm! I want to see the fear in every challengers eyes, before their Pokemon hit the field! I want you all to be so quick and so strong and so skilled that nobody would even dare match up their Pokemon against you! I want to win before the fight even begins! That's the kind of team I want us to be! That's the kind of team we're going to be! That's the kind of Pokemon I'm going to make you into! Because if we don't become that kind of team, we're never going to win the Whirl Cup. And we'll never bring home this..."

She pressed a key on the smart-pad and an image she had cued up, was sent to the gymnasium's display system. A huge picture projected itself against the bottom of the pool from the electronics suite built underneath it, using the massive lower surface of the tank as a 7500 square-foot screen, presenting them with a hundred foot wide image a crystalline, tear-shaped pendant , which rippled before them so monstrously, that they all had to lean backward to take it in.

She knew, just as well as all of them knew, that the Mystic Water artifact could multiply the power of water-type moves. She could see their eyes alight with the vision of it's multifaceted gem. The luster sparked back at her, reflected in all their gazes, and leaving a bleary halo of cobalt in her own tear-filled orbs.

"I know I want this," she insisted. She honestly couldn't think of anything she would've liked to get her hands on more. She didn't think of herself as a trainer hungry for accolades—at least not in the same way Ash was—but she craved this. She'd have melted down every last award and medallion she had to her name, and used them as fishing sinkers, if it meant getting her hands on this. Her drive was there, hot like a glowing brand, but affirmation of that was not what she needed. She needed theirs.

She grit her teeth, and stared at all of them, waiting for them to turn back toward her, one and all. When they finally did, she paused to wipe her cheeks with the flat of her palms, and then asked them what she'd meant to ask them all morning. "But what I have to know is: do you want this?"

All of them roared, bubbled and glimmered out their approval. All of them save one. Marill. The water mouse bolted for the quad-doors to the arena. She had expected this, though, and without comment, she followed, the paper she had printed rolled tightly in her hand.

She found Marill, predictably, in the garage, sitting where she normally would, curled up on top of a folded blue gi—a commemorative token of that seminar so long ago—blue ball of a tail tip twitching slowly. Marill was hiding her face, and looking at the wall, but Misty knew she had to know who was here.

The gym-leader plopped down on the nearby weight-bench and reclined a bit, on her hands. This was how it went, whenever Misty said or did something that upset the little Pokemon, which was often, given her rather spoiled demeanor. Many times she had needed to come out here with pokeblock or poffin peace-offerings, after losing her temper. But she knew, in the end, this was her fault. Not only that she had to, but also that she had. This behavior had been caused by her.

It just seemed so right at the time. A surrogate child, given to her in place of the wound Togetic had left behind, still fresh and raw. Surely that's how Tracey had meant it, and that was certainly how she'd received that egg. But the actual execution had been all wrong. The coddling, the affection, the unwaning attention, that had all brought her and Togepi closer. But that was just in Togepi's nature. It was the individual that had made that relationship work. Togepi thrived on those things, just as she had wanted to give them,and the two of them were both the better for it.

Tracey had once said, in hindsight, that it was because Togepi had a 'Docile' nature, while Marill's personality was 'Sassy'. All those things that Togepi had enjoyed, Marill demanded. Felt entitled to, Tracey had said. Misty didn't see any flaw in that logic. Tracey was the behavioral scientist, after all. Still, she couldn't blame Marill for being the way she was, and while she could, and did reserve a bit of the blame for herself, she knew it wouldn't do any good to dwell on it.

The dynamic of their relationship needed to change and grow, in the same way that the gym had, and would; for the better.

"I want to show you something," Misty said, simply. She laid the rolled up paper down next to her, and cropped both edges under dumbbell weights to hold it flat. "Come here."

Marill didn't move. Her tail twitched. Misty knew that if she said more, things would go back to the way they always had. She would be reduced to begging and pleading, bargaining for peace which she needed to be given her freely, and without complaint. She needed loyalty more than ever, now. The same would be true if she got up and left. Maybe it would drive home to Marill just how different things were going to be, but it would only drive the wedge further. In her eyes, Marill was almost as prideful as she was sassy. She would be lucky if Marill showed her face again today, were she to do that.

Instead, she waited, wordless and unyielding. Marill held out for a long time, to her credit. It seemed like for every scrap of pleasantness that she had ever possessed as an Azurill—and there had been a lot, she remembered—she'd gained an equal amount of obstinacy as a Marill.

Gradually, the diminutive blue Pokemon rolled to find her still there, and still silent, much to its apparent disbelief. Misty pretended not to notice the soppy, dark eyes. She patted a spot on the bench next to her, but did not repeat herself. A few more minutes of holding out, and Marill trudged off of the gi, and made her way grudgingly to her trainer's side.

"Marill," her Pokemon harrumphed.

When Misty was satisfied with the positioning, she indicated the paper, and though Marill refused to look, Misty did nothing to further entice the Pokemon's attention. "This is from the day you hatched."

The picture, much like the one her sister's had threatened to give to Ash, was not one of her finer moments. Her hair was a coppery tangle of knots and fly-away, and she was only wearing a yellow pajama shirt, and her underwear. She remembered that moment, when her knees had buckled under her on the wood floor.

She'd just come into the living-room, bolting out of bed, at the sound of Lily screaming her name. She'd practically flew, abandoning her blanket in the hall, ramming into the linen closet, and nearly tripping down the stairs in her drowsiness and haste. Violet had of course, been there, waiting with camera in hand to line up the shot, she'd found out later, but all she remembered seeing at the time was this adorable bundle of pure blue happiness and joy gradually working its way out of it's egg-shell.

She'd held it in her hands, careful to pick away only the bits of shell that the tiny baby Azuril had already broken away on it's own, waiting, watching. Azurill had been so helpless looking then, eyes still unopened, gradually swelling and shrinking with the first inflation of breath it had ever known. That tiny ball of fur and wonderment had seemed like everything she'd ever wanted or needed at that moment. Something that would need her to care for it, forever, she had naively hoped. It hadn't made her forget Togetic. Nothing ever would've, but it had pushed it back that hurt, and then overridden it. Replaced it with a renewed joy, so fierce, and so much more intense than one she had known before that it made her cry. A second chance, realized in spite of all odds. Big, fat Feraligatr tears clung visibly to her jawline in the photograph, and her face was mortifyingly contorted into an immortalized sob.

She was human. She cried like anyone else. Maybe a little more than most, but she felt like that was to be expected. Misty had learned that crying was not just something that children did; growing older meant that there were often more, and newer reasons to cry as you went along, and she doubted that most people had as much on their plate as she often did. She didn't feel like it made her less strong, when she did it, but she had never, ever cried like that before. Lily, Daisy, and even Violet had come to console her, after a few minutes, thinking—and not unreasonably, since she was still crying her heart out—that something had terribly upset her. But she had just been so overwhelmed, that it'd come out as tears, she guessed. It made a pressure build at the back of her throat just to think about it.

"I've always been here," she said, her voice becoming mild and quiet. "I've known you from the very first moment you came into the world." She knew Marill better than she knew herself, Misty thought, in the way only someone from the outside looking in, day after day, possibly could. "I didn't think anything could ever make me so happy."

"Marill?" Marill looked up at her, eyes now even more wet, if that was possible. Somewhere in the middle of her reflection, Marill had evidently snuck a peek at the paper.

"Until this morning." Misty correct, her voice taking on a slight waver. Marill look confused, but just as Misty had imagined she might, curious. At her core, Marill loved nothing more than to please her. She might've been self-interested and proud and perhaps even needy, but she was foremost endeared to Misty, and the gym-leader knew that Marill would put up with quite a bit to garner a bout of affection.

"There is nothing in the whole wide world would make me more happy, or more proud, than to lay the Mystic Water around your neck." She slid her clasped thumb and forefingers against the fur under Marill's ears, and slid them downward in a v towards the white patch on her tummy, as though cinching a cord. She prodded the spot where her fingers converged, and smiled. "To put that droplet right there, and let it gleam bright for the whole world to see," she felt a twinge of excitement, and budding pride just saying that.

But then, her smile waned. "I've only ever wanted you to have the best I have to give you," she promised. "But I've run out of things that I can just give to you, without being able to put more trust in you."

Marill stiffened, but Misty let her fingertips move to catch the water-type's forepaws, and hold her steady. "If I have to be more dependable, then so do you. We can't keep having this back and forth between us. I have to be a trainer, and you have to be a Pokemon" Misty hoped that Marill would understand all that that implied. "You have to work hard, and you can't complain when I make you do the same things as everyone else. We're all a team. If I ask it of them, It wouldn't be fair of me to not ask it of you, as well. You have to train, just like the rest of us."

Marill just looked back at her, eyes slowly spilling over...

...Then she pulled away and fled the garage. The act of betrayal left a slash on Misty's heart, and held her paralyzed there for a few minutes, sitting in cold contemplation. She rubbed at her mouth in discontentment. It tasted very bitter, and it was not just the tang of tears beginning in her sinuses. She let out a choked noise, but then sucked it back in.

She felt like punching herself, and screaming, but she stood up anyways. As much as she was now loathe to do it, she still had a job to do. She couldn't let herself feel like she'd turned her back on Marill, as much as that was what it seemed like. If anyone had turned their back, wasn't it Marill? Somehow, though, she just couldn't bring herself to attribute blame.

Her trip back to the arena felt like it took all day, and she found herself, more than once, turning to see if the little blue thing she had once cradled like a baby in her arms would come running after her, and they could share a tearful hug, and go on as if what had happened had not happened. She even thought about going back and apologizing to the Pokemon, and offering up treats and hugs as contrition just as she had in the past, and took more than one step in that direction. Ultimately, she stopped herself, though. This had to be done. Her other Pokemon were all in, and she was not going to disappoint them. She would give them everything she was capable of giving, and expect nothing less in return. And maybe, Marill would see how much progress they were making, and decide to give up her obstinacy. Misty was not petty. She would not exclude Marill as a late-comer.

She stopped at the doors, and let herself heave out some of the regrets and misgivings she had as deep sighs, took one final glance back toward the house and after convincing herself that it was a lost cause, she opened the heavy metal portal before her. What greeted her was a wall of sound.

All, or else, near all of her Pokemon were gathered around the pool, just as she'd left them, though now more densely clustered at its edge. Within, Gyarados—its long serpentine body arching out and back under the water in several places—was craning its neck around, firing gush after gush of water from it's mouth into the pool around it, in a succession of large voluminous Hydro Pump attacks. As she got closer, it seemed as though something was in the water along with it. Had her Gyarados and Ash's Kingler finally decided to have it out? Was this the ugly resolution to their otherwise amicable competition with each other?

No, there was Kingler at the edge, looking on, clacking his claws in excitement. She knit her brow as she drew closer. What in the hell was going on?

Again and again, Gyarados shot volleys of water that would've flattened lesser Pokemon than itself. Each was hitting the water with such a massive splash that it kicked up deflecting columns ten feet high. Anything under the surface would've almost certainly been slapped against the bottom by such force, but yet the shadow under the surface always seemed to weave away, or corkscrew right through it, unaffected. Some of her Pokemon seemed to notice she was there now, but they did not part, nor did she push past them. She just watched, enthralled as they were. When she'd come in, she'd suspected some menace, but now she sensed an air of interest about the whole thing that suggested it was not an actual fight, at least not in a hostile sense.

Gyarados' tail raising and slapping down viciously into the water might've suggested otherwise to someone who didn't know her Pokemon as well as she did. The resultant explosion of water as a half-ton of serpent-flesh slapped against it drenched them all, but she kept watching right on through the spray, as a small blue shape scrambled up the offending tail and zipped across it, quick as lightning, and as slippery as an Eelektrik. She almost fooled herself into thinking that's what it was, for a moment, so fluid was the motion of the shape, as to elongate the figure it cast against Gyarados' hide.

The shape weaved around the atrocious Pokemon as it thrashed, always in contact, never giving the larger Pokemon enough separation to actually hit it. And it was rolling. Yes, actually rolling its way over the humped ridges and between the spined fins of the imminently larger Pokemon It struck her like a slap, when it finally worked its way up Gyarados' neck, like a mountain-climber using many diverting courses in it's progress toward a straight-ahead peak. Gyarados curled into an 'S', like a viper, and the shape—a shape she suddenly recognized—met the reared Bite attack with it's own Roll out.

Gyarados had mistaken the english of Marill's roll, though, and was bashed under the jaw for his efforts by the colliding backspin. The blow sent him reeling back, and Marill, who popped free, was the one to bear down on him with a Hydro Pump. It was thinner, but every bit as energetic, and the serpentine Pokemon was forced face-first under the waves like a young child being dunked by their mischievous older sibling.

That probably wasn't going to be the end of it, and if she knew Gyarados, he'd be back above the water and head-hunting in no time. It never got there, though. She shouted Marill's name, and Marill echoed it back to her, overjoyed. She flung herself into the water and shot like a comet toward her precious Pokemon

She hadn't run away. She hadn't betrayed Misty's trust. She'd gone to do exactly what it was Misty'd asked her to do. Train. Battle—and furthermore, kick ass at it. When she finally bowled over the stationary Pokemon in a final butterfly stroke, they tumbled end over end together in the pool, hugging one another tightly. When they breached the surface, she flung the tiny blue dynamo skyward, and caught her again, like a trained Seel playing with a diving buoy. Gyarados tugged them both out, lassoing her about the waist and setting her gently pool-side.

She could've cried right then, but instead, she just beamed brightly, and the tears became mirth as she called out to all of them, "C'mon everyone. We've got a lot of work to do!"

When her Pokemon gathered about, she could tell by their expressions that everything was going to be fine. This was going to work out. They were in this together. They were all behind her, and she was behind all of them.

Just like the Gym, she thought: The same as always—but better.

* * *

It turned out to be many long hours before Kazuo had been able to make his way back, and he returned to find Holiday balancing a pencil on the bridge of his nose, both feet propped up on the console table. He cleared his throat, but rather than snap to, Holiday only glanced over. "Oh, hey."

Kazuo tried to swallow the annoyance from his tone, but it was useless. "What were you able to find?"

Holiday mulled over what he'd read for a moment, and then shrugged. "I read through the stuff you left. Most of it was junk."

When Kazuo looked fit to erupt, the admin seemed to conveniently remember something, "Except this one bit."

"Looks like the team on hand when this thing was excavated at Sayda Island wanted to take a tissue sample, but I guess if that ever got taken, it got lost during transfer," he commented offhandedly. "That sounded like a pretty good idea, so I took a full panel. Blood, tissue from several regions, so on and so forth."

"From several regions?" Kazuo asked, confused. "There are automated systems in place within the chamber to do that?"

"No."

"So, how did you get the sample?"

"I'm really not sure where you're going with this," Holiday asked, perplexed by Kazuo's reticence.

"The samples." Kazuo only now noticed the collection of stacked dishes standing on the console, each with a half-inch of iridescent purple growth catalyst inside. "How did you go about getting them?"

"Uh...Big 'ol rubber apron, A three and three eighths hole-saw, nine or ten pallet-spatulas—Oh," Holiday held up hid hands. "And my mitts."

Kazuo's eyes widened. To outright show that he was surprised that Holiday had stepped inside the chamber would've been too far, and would've put sinister implications down that the administrator would not fail to take note of. There was always the possibility that someone as cunning as Holiday was intentionally lying to him, to provoke just such a betrayal of truth. Instead, he merely made a dismissive gesture, and asked "What were your initial findings, then?" Still, the thought did not leave him.

"Well, putting together what notes I was able to find on it's excavation and preliminary studies done on-site, alongside what I can determine just from sight-evaluation, I can reasonably say that it's an apex species, much much larger than any other organism from that time-period, which is truly extraordinary—initial carbon-dating done on Sayda island but the fossil remains at circa 500 million BC, at least. Most macroscopic creatures of that era were simple arthropods. Thus far, this is the earliest known example of Pokemon life. Even the earliest known Kabuto fossils can't pre-date this thing. This, whatever this is, was the super-organism of it's time."

"So, it's a creature straight from the primordial oceans. I note that it has no mouth," Kazuo commented, seeming almost reflective, and perhaps, a bit relieved. "Doesn't seem as though it was an apex predator."

"I couldn't even begin to make assumptions about why, until I've done more extensive tests, but I wouldn't discount that possibility. There's clearly a lot that modern science doesn't understand about the Paleozoic Era. I really don't think it's important, at least not in the scope of what this recovered specimen represents," Holiday replied casually. "I got to be honest, though, I think as far as our friend from the PLF was concerned, it wasn't necessarily the specimen itself they were after."

"Are after." Kazuo corrected. He didn't believe for a moment that it would end here.

"Like a jelly doughnut, it's what's inside that counts, here. The rest is just window-dressing." The first test he had done, like any good engineer, had been an intensive but simple visual inspection, inside and out. It would be the least specifically engaging test, as most anything more complex either required very pure machine-extracted samples, with testing and calibrated treatment so precise that it could not be entrusted to a human hand, which was slow-coming or impossible since he'd just gone in and bored a chunk out of it with a hand-drill. Still, he expected it to nudge him in one direction or another, and it had."

"I was surprised when I found evidence of some sort of well-progressed retro-viral infection, likely in its final stage during the time of preservation." He turned, and pulled the bulk of a low-power electron microscope- almost a half-ton, and nearly six feet tall on its perpendicular stand—from behind the console with much effort, or his inspection.

Kazuo set the wheel-locks of the stand in place, then stooped to look into the goggled screen. A row of walled cells,each seeming massive next to the tiny circular capsids that lingered malignantly outside them. To the left end of the slide, the micro-dissection showed orderly, efficient cells stacked in neat square rows, uninfected by the small black dots. To the left, the cells slowly degraded into a blackened field of pin-pricks. The closest column of cells that still remained were swollen and oblong, and instead of organelles—the tiny specialized structures that carried out the functions within a cell—there were only more of the tiny little specks, like a cross-section of some evil pregnancy.

"We don't know of any modern viral diseases that can actually infect a Pokemon host. There are a few they can carry, but none—as far as I am aware—they can actually be infected by. It's the cell wall that makes them immune, we think. Most plants have something similar, though it's not as effective. Nothing gets through the cell walls of a Pokemon cell except for water, gas and Pokemon DNA. The cell walls are specifically evolved for that purpose. We think it's one of the reasons they are able to so rapidly evolve into their more mature forms, without worrying about genetic corruption which would only lead to mutation—hell the only observed birth defect we've ever seen in Pokemon, is Shiny Coloration—so, anyways, this appears to be unique, at least in that regard, even if you discount that it's over half a billion years old."

"So it's some sort of extinct Pokemon disease."

Holiday screwed his features up. "No. Not extinct. A virus is not a living thing. You're talking about organic material, yes, but a virus is not self-propagating, it has no metabolism to begin with. I know it sounds strange, but essentially you're looking at nothing but a pile of specialized messenger RNA. The cells it was using to multiply itself are dead, but were you to inject that slide into your bloodstream, it would be just as infectious as it was five hundred million years ago."

"How can you be sure of that?"

"I can't." Holiday admitted. "Not without running some tests." The viruses could just as easily be carbonized and inert, he supposed, but the core-strata he'd taken had contained enough viscera to support the claim in principle, and notes taken during the excavation had gone on and on about the presence of aDNA samples containing proto-viral RNA. All the evidence so far seemed to support similar conclusions.

"Do you know anything about Deoxys?" Kazuo asked, unsure of how much Holiday was aware of. He'd received reports of a similar sort of Pokemon spotted near LaRousse city, as well as within mainland Kanto. How similar, he wasn't sure, but he'd heard it described as a virus-like Pokemon, by best reports. Could the two be related? Thus far Holiday had told him none of what he'd wanted to hear? Nothing so far explained the thing in any adequate way! What about the demands? What about the thing in the dark that had learned to communicate with him using that damnable blinking red light? What about the thing that had nearly melted his brain the last day he'd been down here? And furthermore, what about that noise he'd heard only hours ago? How had Holiday not even heard it? For that matter, how the hell had he gotten inside there with that thing, and lived to tell about it, much less taken power-tools to it!

Holiday shrugged. "About as much as anyone else, I'd suppose." It was obvious that what he was aware of didn't please him.

"I'm assuming then, that there's a significant difference between the two, in this instance."

"There have never been any successful studies in astrobiology, or concrete evidence to suggest that there is such a thing as an extra-terrestrial, Pokemon or otherwise, so let me just get that right out there in the open," Holiday said in a huff of angry realism. "The questionable assertion that it was an alien creature not withstanding, there were eye-witness reports of the thing moving around, radically changing shape, not to mention being over five feet tall. That's not the sort of behavior your typical infectious agent exhibits, and Dexoys—whatever it was—was obviously a more complex organism than any sort of 'virus', whatever they may have called it. Yes, it may have hijacked into the robotics system in LaRousse City, and I suppose one might even take into account some of the reported 'posessions' as evidence to the contrary—but those are more the traits of a computer virus-like Pokemon, such as Porygon, or psychic and ghost-types, respectively, than those of a viral specimen, even if I did consider them substantiated. Which I don't."

"So, not related?" Kazuo deadpanned again, not hearing any of what he wished, but not able to ask for more, without revealing himself too completely.

Holiday just wished people would take no for an answer in just so many words. "If they are related, it is well outside the scope of my ability to tell, at this point, anyways. If you can get ahold of a Deoxys specimen, I can tell you more definitively, though I fail to see why it is important. Do you see something I've neglected to note?" Holiday remarked with a rather displeased looking grimace, that said all too clearly that he doubted it.

Kazuo the question was scathing, for it's own reasons, regardless of whether Holiday was clear as to the deeper meaning of them. Kazuo shook his head in withdrawal of the notion. "And what of the... creature itself?" he asked, feeling as though he was being improprietous, after having graciously revered to the thing as his "guest" for so long, and having likewise been imposed upon by it, but now having seemingly subjugated it.

Holiday gave him a look. "It's still there."

"No, I mean, what..." Kazuo didn't want to mangle the jargon, but truthfully he was no scientist, nor doctoral graduate. He maintained a broad array of intellectual interests, but he was no expert in any field save business, and the career he'd known before. Neither were particularly useful here. "What is..."

Spit it out, he told himself. Just say what you want, and have done with it!

He needed to know about its capabilities, it's thoughts, it's motives. Not whether or not it was suffering from pre-cambrian herpes, dammit! It wanted to use him as a pawn as much as he needed to use it as one, and he could ill afford that. He realized that they were all a despicable menagerie of three all using one another in a circle, but Holiday was one of the few—possibly the only—man in the world capable of answering those questions. He needed something useful from the engineer, not this!

"Has the creature attempted to communicate with you?" Kazuo asked, suddenly and bluntly. "Coded messages, possibly psychic communication?" He didn't know if that was a possibility, but it did seem more likely than aural communication, given that it had no mouth. Would Holiday even look for it? Would he know what it was, even if it was happening?

To his surprise, Holiday merely slumped back into his chair. His look was more bewildered dismay than deflection. "No."

Kazuo cut to the chase. "Humming, buzzing, high pitched whine in your ear? Anything of that nature?"

Holiday's frown deepened. "No."

Kazuo's frown deepened along with Holiday's, stride for stride. Anger crept into his voice. "What about when you took the tissue sample? Surely it didn't just sit there and let you cut it open!"

The Admin de-focused for a moment. His eyes spun a slow arch under fluttering half-closed eye-lids. A creeping jut of the neck that would've been comical on any other man, suggested a barely contained outburst in a man as acerbic as Holiday. When those sea-smoke eyes popped open again, and held him accusingly, sounds burbled up from within him. He was at such a loss for words, even visibly, that Kazuo himself felt vulnerable.

Holiday had no withering riposte for that. Someone had finally opened a line of question that was so monumentally confounding that it'd corked even him. The dam inevitably burst though, and Holiday melted down into something both erudite and licentious, equal parts proletariot contempt and repugnant swearing.

"What the fuck would I be doing, talking to a fucking chunk of carbon? It's fucking borderline-retarded, and I have better things to do than anthropomorphize a fucking billion year old lump of rock! You got me wandering halfway around the fucking world, following around with some fucking teenage kid—and for what?—then you call me back here to do high-school computer language, and biology because you kicked everyone worth a shit out of the building, and now I find out it's because you want to play pretend? I don't if this is how hyper-rich, high-society stuffed-cunts like you get their rocks off, or whatever, but If you're trying to make a fool out of me, you can take your stupid fuckin' games and shove them straight up your ass!" Holiday rammed a finger diagonally towards Kazuo's face. The man was nearly purple with fury.

Kazuo wasn't sure where to tread, but eventually he decided to just reach into his jacket. The gesture instantly took the piss out of Holiday. It had two purposes and one of them, of course, was to make it appear as though he were going for his pistol. The admin settled back a bit, sobered by the glint of brushed nickel finish on the hand-grip, looking like he'd suddenly realized who he was talking to, but was surprised with a yellow sheet of paper was withdrawn instead. Kazuo handed it to him, and he opened it, albeit grudgingly.

It was a transcript of some kind. It was earmarked with the date and time the conversation had taken place, along with notes concerning the automatic recording bit-rate and the date of this transcripts reproduction. The page contained nine or ten lines of speech, each one headed by one letter, before a triple bracket. K. There didn't seem to be another speaker, as far as Holiday could see, but each line was undercut by a long series of pips and dashes, which at first, Holiday took to be simply computer-generating spacing characters, but eventually came to realize was transcribed audio code. Morse Code short-hand.

One read: YOUR AGENTS PLOY AT CERULEAN CAPE UNSUCCESSFUL—stop. REGROUP THEM AT PORT OF SUNSETS—stop. DO NOT ENGAGE DIRECTLY—stop. ADOLECENT SLOWLY AWAKENING TO ABILITY—stop.

What the fuck was this? Holiday held it up and asked exactly that, accusingly.

"You're looking at a transcribed, timestamped conversation, two hours prior to you calling me that day."

Holiday figured that Kazuo had to have eyes in place in Kanto, but that just didn't make sense. Two hours before he'd called in to report that they'd lucked out, meant that this conversation had been taking place while the performance was still happening. He mentally ticked off the time-zone differential, just to make sure that was correct. It was. "How is this possible?" he asked, baffled.

"That's what I want you to tell me," Kazuo insisted.

So then it wasn't an inside man. Then, that didn't make sense either. Holiday stiffened again. "Then why do you have me here, instead of back in Kanto, trying to find an informant, and having Doc punch his teeth out?"

"Because that transcript," Kazuo nodded towards the paper, "and those encoded replies, came from here."

For a second, Kazuo thought he meant Realgam Tower generally. Not until he realized Kazuo was pointed toward the quartz viewing panel, to the creature silhouetted inside, did Holiday understand.

He chuckled, because that's all he could think of to do. "That's not possible."

Kazuo blinked at him. "I have no reason left to lie about it," he assured. He was loathe to tell Holiday anywhere near this much, and could not possibly tell him more, so he hoped that Holiday bought that at face value.

Holiday was smart enough to know better, but at least knew well enough to let sleeping Lillipup lie. He was uncomfortable with the amateur assertion being made, but he was far more comfortable with that, than with having his professional integrity mocked. He was relieved that it hadn't turned out to be that.

"Listen, boss," Holiday began, heaving a breath, and rubbing at his mouth. Stubble was beginning to raise on his face, and he felt every bit as haggard as that made him look, suddenly. "It's just not capable of such a thing. You said yourself that the PLF knows about this thing. Maybe they're interfacing with the computer system somehow, and feeding you intel routed through this room to fuck with your head."

He paused, and when Kazuo gave him nothing, he almost felt sorry for the guy.

"I can't put it any more plainly. It is a volcanic-ash fossil. A rock. There's some gooey bits in the middle, but nothing living. No more than those viral colonies, at best. Just organic molecules, really. What you're implying, is strictly impossible. I don't know who or what you were talking to here," he whapped the paper back and forth, "and I'll admit that it's pretty unusual insight, but I can assure you that it didn't come from that specimen. This isn't some fossil Pokemon that's been cloned in a laboratory. It took researchers on Cinnabar Island nearly fifty years to develop the methodology to do that, and they needed samples from thousands of recovered soft-tissue specimens to complete a full genotype. This is one specimen. The only specimen as far as we know. Whatever else this thing is, it's very much dead, and it has been for half a billion years."

* * *

When Ash awoke, his headache was raw and the lethargy that filled him down to the fingertips revealed itself as a powerful soreness in disguise. Every part of him hurt like it'd had a hammer taken to it, and a marching band stomped its way from his temples to his gut. Still, stubbornly, he tried to sit up.

He was in a long, hall-shaped room which he assumed to be one of the compound raid-shelters he'd never been in before. The inside of it was clean, white and filled with tables and cabinets. He found from the hardness, poorly concealed under a foam cushion and a doubled-up wool blanket, that he was laying on one of the tables.

After sitting up straight, he decided he preferred it to the alternative, though, and gently laid back down.

"Hero Boy," someone groaned at him, from his side. He snapped his head that way, and instantly regretted it, when pain flared in his shoulders and neck.

Melody was sitting beside him on a table of her own, looking just as beaten and bruised as he was, though she'd somehow managed to sit up. Seeing her do it, forced him back up onto his rump, pain be damned.

Looking closer, he could see that she had a collection of scrapes and cuts down her cheek where the log had fallen on her, and green and purple bruises ran from her jaw down into the muddied collar of her fatigues in a thick swath. She gave him a smirking sort of grin, though, and a wink, when he finally bobbed upright, and let his feet swing off the table.

He rolled his eyes, before he realized they weren't alone in the room, and a stout little DI came clomping across the floor at them, with name-tape sewn under his lapel that said 'Baily.'

"Iuakea, you're looking at a grade two concussion. Take this and get yourself some acetaminophen from the commissary," he said, briskly handing her a yellow carbon-copy slip.

"Other than that, nothing you didn't already know. Both of you are suffering from mild to moderate starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, sleep deprivation..." The man rolled his finger around as he went through a long list of things, with little interest " Muscle inflammation, stress-hypertension, yadda yadda yadda, pretty typical Corps shit."

Remembering, he turned to Ash, "You, actually, have a minor case of immersion foot," he said, and pointed towards Ash's feet, which he only now realized were bare. "So, keep your shoes and socks dry as you can over the next few days."

"Now, both of you grunts have orders from the LT to hit the showers, and report for eighteen-hundred meal-time."

Ash knew his eyes lit up, because Melody's practically overflowed with mirth when they looked at each other. Without another word, they scrambled for the door, forgetting their aches and pains, and came as near as they could manage to a sprint toward the wash-house.

Next door, in the office building, though, orders of a different sort were being received.

"I don't know what the hell you're doing here, or who you're involved with, but all that shit stops now. From here out you're a corpsman, and that's all you are." Surge grumped. "You may have been one of Bruno's apprentices once, but don't think for a second that I believe that makes you above reproach. There's bad apples in every barrel."

Doc didn't care at all for the tone.

"Am I being accused with something?" he asked, glancing from side to side in order to spot some Jenny that may've been hiding in the wood-work. As far as he knew, being a gigantic douche-bag wasn't punishable by law. At least, nobody had threatened to arrest Holiday for it yet, to his knowledge. If that hadn't happened yet, he hardly saw how he could be punished for acting at Holiday's behest. Surge slammed his fist down on the table in stern response to his sarcasm.

"I don't know what sort of trouble you've gotten yourself into, that a league whistle-blower has to come and give me grief about you, but rest assured that if it has anything to do with Team Rocket, they will eventually get to the bottom of it. That guy Silver may be an asshole, but he's good at what he does—"

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about." Doc said pointedly, cutting across him. When Surge gave him a severe look, he added curt "sir." Big as Doc was, Surge was still half-again as large, and in a noticeably better condition, as things stood, with him covered in mud, and his arm in a sling.

"That's good," Surge assured him. "Consider yourself on thin ice. Put so much as a toe out of line, and not only will you be put out of this program, but so help me, I will drag you before Bruno, and bring all of this nonsense to light."

The Lieutenant and recruit shared a look then, that was not amiable in the slightest. "I don't imagine your 'Sensei' will find this any more funny than I do, will he?"

Doc didn't bother to shake his head. He was neither going to confirm or deny any suspicions that Surge might've had on the matter, regardless of what they were. He knew the answer, however. If Bruno hadn't intended to out and out disgrace him, by barring him from continuing his training on account of his injury, the shame he would face if Bruno ever learned of Doc's involvement with his current disreputable employer—whether or not it turned out to be the one these league goons expected—would be much, much more severe.

Doc let none of it show on his face, though, when he asked plainly "Is that all you wanted, sir?"

"No," Surge clarified. "Bailey tells me your rotator gave out. Will you be able to continue with the training program?"

Doc nodded. "I can."

"You can." Surge confirmed. "But should you?"

The question was posed in a way that made clear that it was less an answer that Surge wanted, so much as to force Doc to take a good long look at himself. Doc didn't want too, though, and instead he just let out a long hiss, and retracted his arm from the sling. He tossed it over his head, and slung it forward onto Surge's desk. With his injured arm bearing the weight, he pushed himself from the chair, and stood. The pain was blinding, but he stared at the two pin-pricks of Surge's face that he could actually see through his tunnel-vision, and then saluted.

"Regardless, I will, sir."

He didn't wait for an acknowledgment—or, more likely, a rebuke—and instead, turned on his heel, and walked out.

Doc's vision returned gradually, but he was still in a haze when he made it to the showers. He unbuttoned his fatigues, and ripped off his undershirt one-handed. He didn't realize that there was someone else in the stalls until he'd already turned on the tap. Doc gave one sideways look at Ash, who was blushing powerfully on the opposite side of the shoulder-high stall, and then ignored him.

Ash however, could not so easily put aside the powerful awkwardness of being naked so close to another person, and took to staring at the wall, for as long as it took for Doc to leave—which was an uncomfortably long time.

When Doc was finally gone, all the heat had left the tap, and water fell over him cold as if it were the first melt of spring, but he found that he didn't mind so much. He finished up with his wash, using his palm to work the dirt and grime and Arceus knew what else from his stippling brush of hair, and to moisten and loosen the thick, caked-on mud that covered almost every inch of him, making his skin look like a badly-fired clay-pot.

It seemed like the soap did more than just carry away the gray-brown muck in chunks and flakes, clean away the dried blood of tens of minor cuts and abrasions, or cleanse the oily sheen of sweat from his face.

When he looked at himself now, he saw a sleekness. He was bonier, for a certainty, but it wasn't even so bad that he could see his ribs, unless he stretched to one side or the other. The child-like nature of his features was gone, and behind it was only the hard suggestion of muscles in his arms and shoulders and chest, and waist, even—muscles he had not even suspected himself of having.

He did not think of himself as a man fully grown and he was still very skinny even by his own reckoning, but all of him that had been adolescent and plump was gone, replaced by veined and ropy cords that bulged and stretched when he moved.

When Ash got out of the shower, he paused by the foggy mirror. He smiled to himself awkwardly, as he flexed his bicep, but it turned quickly to a grimace as the sore muscle flared, and he had to rub it consolingly.

He returned to his foot-locker and worked his underwear on up underneath the towel, before taking it off and dressing the rest of the way. When he was fully dressed he was back to being normal, regular, scrawny and short under his baggy fatigues; he was a little thankful for that, minus the short part. Now if only his hair would grow back, he thought, as he lined up the poke ball and anchor emblem on his cap with his nose.

He noted that Doc was still in the barracks, as he turned to leave, and he made to hurry on, without comment, when the older boy stopped him with just a few words.

"What are you?" It was a strange thing to ask. Stranger still, to be asked, though it seemed like this was not the first time the question had been posed to him today. Though, maybe not so bluntly.

He squeaked to a stop on the heel of his boots, shedding a few flakes of mud from the sole onto the polished concrete, and then turned. He wasn't sure what to say, so he simply met Doc's look head-on, bringing his hands up to grip each opposite elbow; not quite crossing them, but neither relaxing.

"There's something about you that isn't normal." Doc asked, as much as stated. It was obvious, after all that there was something about the kid that was extraordinary, otherwise, why would Team Nebula be interested in him at all? But did Ash know it? Furthermore, did Ash even understand it?

Ash thought about it. His mom did always used to tell him that he was the stubbornest boy she'd ever known, but somehow he doubted that's what he was talking about. In fact, he had a mind to believe that this was just another insult wrapped up in a thin guise. He turned his head to the side, and clicked his tongue in disgust. "What? You never seen a real Pokemon trainer?"

"How did you hold up that log?" Doc asked, unimpressed with the sarcasm.

"Same way you did," Ash said, looking sourly at the wall.

"That was almost a half-ton of weight, and you pulled it back onto you, when it was pushing both of us down," Doc snarled.

"So what?" Ash asked, though his tone was somewhat tempered by the realization that the task did seem impossible.

Doc harrumphed and then crossed his own arms, with a flare of pain and a grimace. The shower had helped some, and the pain was dulling down, but it was still terrible to move his arm. Ash caught the expression out of the corner of his eye, though. "Is that arm going to be alright?" he asked, half dutifully, half grudgingly.

"Likely as not," Doc said with a sigh.

"Are you gonna be able to make it through the rest of the training?" Ash asked, trying not to sound as sardonic as he really felt. "If you have to back out, that means I win this little competition, for good and all, right?"

Doc just chortled. "You'd love that."

Ash didn't say anything, but he felt himself sneering.

"Well, forget it. I've been through a lot worse than this."

Ash somehow doubted that. "You've been through a lot worse than this?" the young trainer asked, urging his rival to harken back to what had been going on for the past weeks. No food, and precious little else but backbreaking physical conditioning day in and day out, punctuated by sparse hours of rest and many hours of screaming, snarling and yelling, while everyone in their squad fought amongst one another. "Where was it that you did physical therapy, again? Inside Cinnabar Volcano?"

Doc snorted. "Alright, maybe not worse, perse."

Ash heaved a breath. He was glad for that admittance. "I was gonna say...I felt like we were all gonna die in that mud-pit."

The Nebula frowned. "Get used to the idea. Surge isn't the type of guy to let things end on a soft note, and we've still got a month of this left ahead of us."

Ash's own frown deepened then, knowing that Doc was right. He'd come out of the shower feeling like the worst was over, but now a weight fell heavily over his neck like a stockade. He drooped visibly, letting his arms sag at his sides. He was too depressed by that to feel vulnerable, so he just said what was on his mind. "I'm really not sure I have a month left in me." Echo was down to him, Doc, and Melody, and he was the only one of the three left unhurt. Which was to say nothing of the incredibly exhaustion he felt just then, compounded by lack of enthusiasm.

"It's hard to keep going. But you should realize that you're the only one slowing yourself down." Doc explained, rather sagaciously. As he said it, he reached upward with both hands, and clutched at the last support rung above his head. Ash watched him pull himself into an acrobatic, sitting pull-up, blown shoulder and all, with only a smile on his broad face. "Once you push yourself past that point, that self-imposed barrier, where you think pain and exhaustion have stopped you, you will find yourself capable of far more than you'd imagined."

Ash snorted, but smiled in spite of himself "I suppose that's some physical-therapy mantra."

Doc smirked, and pumped off a few repetitions at the exercise before letting himself slowly back to the mattress. "Would you believe I just made it up?"

Ash thought about giving him a flat no, but then sighed, and admitted, "It makes sense, I guess."

And it's pretty much what everyone has been telling me since I got home, more or less. Hasn't helped yet.

"So do we work together, now, or what?" Ash asked, cautious. He folded his arms back up, trying to take up a defensive entreat.

Doc gave him a look that was more taunting than he would've liked for his trouble, as if to say, "I don't know. Do we?"

Ash didn't bite on that, however, and just kept up his withering look. Eventually, the Nebula just shrugged. Truthfully, he didn't need any more trouble than he was already going to have with Surge hounding his heels, and if making life miserable for Ash meant reprisal, he was more than happy to let that go undone. It made his shoulder ache just thinking about it. "So long as you stay out of my way."

Ash didn't try for any more than that.

Later, he ate so much, he nearly barfed it all up again. When he felt it all try to roil up into his throat, though, he just smashed more food down on top of it. He ended up having eight hamburgers, a roast-beef manhattan, four bowls of mac-and-cheese, and as many slices of pizza—minus the crust—then, with giggling encouragement from Melody, he stacked brownies one on top of the other, and ate his way down from the top in a maneuver that more closely resembled a head-butt than anything.

The misery when he laid down to sleep, clutching at his belly, was sweet in it's own way. He sighed, and forgot all about it, though, when he took a look up at the belt that hung above his head from the support bar of the top bunk.

Corps training had been brutal and tiring, and taken up nearly every waking second of his time. He hadn't so much as seen Pikachu's face since the day Surge had made him put him into a ball. Either by lack of respite or excess of shame, or some combination of both.

He felt his hand reach for the belt but he stopped himself and clasped his hand loosely over his mouth, pulling his lips sideways in frustration. He couldn't. Not yet. If only for the simple fact that the D.I.s would blister him without fail if he released so much as a single Pokemon after lights-out. There was also the matter of his anxiety on the subject.

Still, maybe it was better for the time being. Unlike him, their Pokemon were all being well fed, and well taken care of while the rest of them were otherwise occupied, Surge had assured. He turned them over once a day for an hour or so at a time, so he had to assume that this was true. For all the things he was, Surge didn't seem to be a liar.

And maybe that was for the best. He felt miserable and beaten, and there was really no reason for him to project that at any of his Pokemon, least of all Pikachu, who had seemed pretty upset all on his own, last they'd seen of each other. The only real reason he might've wanted them around right now anyways, would be to make himself feel better. It wasn't as though they could get up and run around or do anything fun or constructive at the moment anyways.

He huffed out another sigh. Friends supported each other when they were bummed out, and all, but he couldn't expect his Pokemon, friends though they might've been, to be his security blanket—no more than any of his human friends would've accepted him clutching tightly to them, and sniffling in the night. Pikachu would trust him to make it through this, and likewise, he would just have to trust Pikachu to make it without him.

He didn't make a sound. "Sorry, buddy," he mouthed, and rolled onto his side. Sleep didn't come easy but, mercifully, it did come.

* * *

A/N: Yeah, boy! It's a done deal. I hope that answers a few questions, as far as what's going on. I know there are a lot more, and I raised a couple new ones in the process, but I promise things will unfold completely down the road. It's just a lot to do at once. The scope of this story just keeps increasing and I have to pace it to tell everything I want to tell, while still feeding you bits and pieces of the main arc. I'm hoping that the speed of the updates will increase considerably here soon, but as usual, I can't promise that.

Also, I haven't touched on this so far, because I haven't really felt the need, but I don't want to treat anyone like they're stupid or anything, so that's the reason I don't exactly go a mile out of my way to explain scientific jargon, even when I get what might seem relatively in-depth with it. I try to explain everything outright that's integral to understanding the plot—but I'll be honest here, I'm no genius. Really, even if it seems like I'm waxing on and on about something, there's still no reason for anyone to assume I'm an expert on it. You're like as not to find everything I'm talking about and more, with just a quick google or wikipedia search. Then again, your equally as likely to find that I don't have any idea what the fuck I'm talking about, so, there you are, I suppose. I try to keep my shit as straight as is possible in a pokemon fic, but dramatic embellishment and simple stupidity and ignorance do sometimes have their way.

Anyways, I'm done blathering on. Thanks so much if you're still here reading after all this time. Comin' up on two years, now. If you're newer to the story, thank you as well for having the patience to read through all of this! What is it now, like ~270k words? That's nothing to sniff at. I hope you'll all be here still when the next one drops.


	16. Chapter XVI

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokemon.

**Chapter Summary: **As the PLF makes its move, a proxy-attack, can the G-Men react in time? How is Ash doing, now that he's decided to stick it out in the Corps? Will sparks fly between Uranium and Ritchie when they begin to question each other's tactics against the elite four?

**A/N: **Excuse time again! I know that I promised on my profile two chapters in succession, but I decided that the second half needed some more scenes, and I just don't have the time to do that and still meet the time-frame I wanted for this chapter's release. I really wanted to do a two-for-one, here, but...man, I'll have worked 108 hours by Saturday night, and I just don't have it in me to do anything but sleep when I'm at home, lately. Regardless I feel like this one stands pretty well on its own, but consider it the first part of a one-two punch combination. This is just the jab. The big right hook is coming. Expect it to hit your eyes sometime soon.

Anyways, enough whining. Um, some fic related things: I still REALLY don't want to change this to an M-rated fic, but I'm probably going to. There are some sexual situations in addition to character deaths in this chapter. Nothing overly explicit, but it's fair to mention, I suppose.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**  
**Chapter XVI**  
"Strike for the Heart"

The two long black bags seemed to crash to the metal mesh dais with more weight than their contents would've normally held, as if lent more weight by the severity of it it all. The tops were zipped down like raincoat shrouds and parted around two faces, beaten and bloodied. They'd put up quite a fight, and their bearers were testament enough to that, if only with bruises of their own. The two triplets were no more wounded than that, it seemed, for theirs were the long, sharp knives that struck in the dark, after all. If their victims had a chance to fight, it was already on unfair terms, and likely only until they lost too much blood from the initial strike to fight back with any competency.

These seemed different, though, at least to Ein. It was hard to tell with the triplets. They weren't the face-making sort, but there did seem to be a certain gravitas to the way they'd come before him. Ghetsis, if anything, seemed troubled and that was even more strange. Never before he seen the Generalissimo act as anything but the detached autocrat he was. Now, though he seemed to be second guessing something.

"We found them trespassing in the Black City research complex," the two triplets said in unison. "We had no choice but to eliminate them."

Ein knew that Black City was where all their genotyping research for the Sayda Island specimen, (at least such research as was not going on here) was taking place, incomplete and insufficient though it would remain, until they could insert a new agent into Cipher. They had one of the initial tissue samples, and the triplets had also managed to whisk away the head researcher, Dora, and her younger sister Crystal as well, for the sake of incentive, during the confusion of Cipher's buyout and the the dissolution of the original research team. Cipher still had the specimen itself, and they now owned the research site, island and all, but the PLF had half of the brains involved.

Still, this was alarming news. Nobody was supposed to know about their Black City facility, much less find their way inside it. It would've taken a truly unique skill set to get in without security clearance. Cryptographic access codes that changed every 36 hours, biometric screening, armed guards, not to mention the triplets wandering the halls whenever they were in attendance. Granted, these two had eventually succumbed to that last one, but still, this was a significant breech.

The triplets said one word. "Guardians."

The word meant nothing to Ein. He was a man of science and little else, but it seemed to hang like a condemnation over Ghetsis' head. The two bodies didn't look like anything special to him. A man and a woman, both blonde, of average height and fit build, but nothing more. Their attire was as black and blue as their faces, and what little of it was not-a white ribbon around the woman's neck and an ascot on the man-were both well past blackened with blood.

"You're certain?"

"Yes," the triplets said, producing everything they'd looted from the bodies. Wallets, a set of wedding rings, other such personal items, everything they'd been carrying, all the way down to pocket-change. The let it clatter to the steel grating in a heap.

"The man: Born in Michina, Sinnoh. Age twenty-eight. Known Guardian. First name: Kevin," one said.

"The woman: Born in Michina, Sinnoh. Age twenty-six. Known Guardian. First name: Sheena," said the other.

"Dammit." Ghetsis cursed under his breath.

Ein didn't know what to say, or how exactly to react, so he just pretended not to notice. Ghetsis eventually rounded on him, though, regardless. "Take us out."

"Sir," he responded, turning to the pilot, and nodding.

"Engines all ahead one third, left full rudder, come to new bearing one-nine-zero." the pilot said to the crew chief, who relayed the call with a yell, all the way back to the engineering deck.

The fusion engines made hardly a sound as they came to life, but the sideways lurch of the vessel as it left Black City Harbor made Ein's stomach roll over. "Explorer One is underway, sir," the pilot declared.

"And bring us underwater. I want us invisible by the time we pass under Marvelous Bridge," Ghetsis added, still brooding over the two bodies laying in the submarine's op center.

"Taking on ballast now, sir," the pilot confirmed, tapping a gauge. When he was satisfied with what it told him, he gave the order. "Make depth two-five meters. Dive!" he shouted, and again, the crew chief relayed the order. Soon, the unseen lapping of waves stopped, and all became as silent as a whisper, save the distant humming of nuclear reactors. The hull popped once with the change in pressure, as the submarine sank to the bottom of the delta and began it's silent lurk out to sea.

Explorer One kept them invisible and safe in a world opposed. The Liberation had been fortunate to acquire it at a liquidation during Cipher's recent buyout of Stern's Shipyard, along with every other ship-laying facility in mainland Hoenn. They raised the broadcast antennae when they were well out into neutral waters and only surfaced in places where secret havens maintained by Plasma loyalists existed. Black City, Mossdeep, Canalave. The sub would run for years without need of refueling, and with a skeleton crew they could pack on enough provisions for almost nine months of continuous operations at snorkel-depth.

Ghetsis looked at the bodies with an intensity, as if he were stuck between hating and fearing them. "Weigh the bags down with re-bar from the tool room, and eject them through the torpedo hatches." The necessity was unspoken. Nobody could've possibly known they were down here, and even if they did, there was no way to get to them. He was certain he was not the only one who'd considered the possibility of psychic Pokemon, though.

There was always the very real, if unlikely possibility of a psychic Pokemon teleporting in. Under ideal circumstances, a Pokemon need be intimately familiar with the place being teleported to, but somehow if it did happen, and an angry psychic Pokemon-and it would be angry, surely, at the sight of it's dead masters-were to start rampaging through the confines of the boat, there would be no emergency blowing of the ballast tanks fast enough to save them from the many thousands of pounds of water-pressure outside.

The two triplets did as they were bid, and stooped to re-seal the body-bags before hefting them up and off through the hatch toward the engineering deck.

Ein hazarded an inquiry, before he returned to the science lab, below. "Guardians, sir?"

Ghetsis looked at him squarely, and something regal returned to him. Evidently, he'd seen the uncertainty on Ein's face too plainly. "Aura Guardians. Nothing the Liberation truly need fear. Agents of an antiquated order of tribal mystics and barbarian knights. Storied, but nothing more. I had hoped not to find the Liberation beset by such foes; ones who've historically seen the strength and wisdom of Pokemon kind as greater than their own, but perhaps the order has fallen to pride and hubris over the centuries. It makes no difference. If they choose to interfere, what remains of the Triad will meet them in the field, and destroy them utterly."

Ein was almost positive that there were more to it than that, but he did not deny Ghetsis' proclamation. The triplets were highly formidable foes. He nodded.

He gave the matter some thought as he took his heave, walking through the rear hatch of the ops-room, and down the passage toward the lower companionway. Though no one in the PLF used Pokemon in the traditional sense-except maybe Ghetsis himself, though he had nothing but suspicions to back that up-sometimes Pokemon did fight alongside them. "Liberated" Ghetsis called them. Pokemon that fought for the liberation of others of their kind. Their operative in Cipher had partnered with one, and they presumed it dead, just like Grayson himself. It stood to reason that Pokemon should also be allowed to fight their own war, after all, with all the hardship that implied, if that was their choice.

But the PLF was largely human in element, and not nearly as large as people might've believed. They were few, and most of their support came from sympathizers and old Plasma members who still maintained social and economic influence. In that area, they got on well enough. Their agenda did not as of yet dictate that they do anything but bide their time, and finish the research they'd set out upon. The chief problem being that, someday-someday soon, to hear Ghetsis tell it-the Liberation would have to directly assault the oppressive power-structure they were plotting against.

The largest snag in that plan was that League supporters were many, and nearly all of them had no reservations about using Pokemon for a purpose they were particularly capable; fighting. Thus far the PLF had made all their strikes through proxies, or elaborate posturing...or the triplets, who primarily combated their disadvantage of having no Pokemon by stabbing anyone who did, and was foolish enough to engage them, until dead.

Ein gave a sigh, and a shrug. It didn't matter. The timing was all up to him, after all. If he was afraid that one day the Liberation would rise, only to be struck down, he could simply delay his research. They couldn't move without him, after all, and he could just keep collecting his dues, safe and sound, deep below the ocean until such time as he saw fit.

* * *

He looked down at the bulky, steel box and receiver with distaste. It was simplified somewhat, without an overabundance of buttons and knobs and whatsit to clutter it all up. Just a switch, a light marked "signal" and a trigger on the receiver It looked like an old-timey radio-piece, but he understood well enough that it was much more complex than that.

Silver just didn't "get" technology, though. To him, this squawk-box was just another gadget he was going to have to put up with, until either he broke it, or Blaine came to take it back from him. He sure as hell wasn't going to take it all the way back to the Seafoam Islands for him. Sure the guy had been all "Take good care of my cellular-decryption-trans-blah-blah-blah, it's a very expensive piece of equipment", or whatever, but it was awful heavy. Not to mention a hunk of junk.

He'd been standing here, pointing the hand set-a clunky disc-shaped thing that looked like some sorta zap-gun from an old black & white science-fiction movie-at this communication tower, and twisting the knob for some two hours now.

So far he' picked up someone's phone-call about how their Weedle had evolved straight into a Beedrill, one or two fragments of a conversation where someone was complaining about having to go back to their job working at a Pokemart with their uncle, and some muffled breathing and moaning from what he suspected was a sex line, among a ton of other crap, none of it useful.

He didn't own a poke gear or anything, so perhaps he didn't have a clear idea of just how many people there were, having cell-phone conversations right now, that weren't the one he wanted to overhear. Blaine had promised that it would pan out, though, and so he kept at it.

"If Handlebars was so smart," he complained out loud to Chikorita, using his nickname for the man, in honor of his enormous mustache, "He'd have put a 'bad guys only' setting on here." He reasoned then, that he could simply push a button, and filter out all the inane conversations to concentrate on the ones he wanted.

Chikorita chirped it's agreement.

Still, Blaine was a pretty smart fella, he reasoned. It took brains to come up with something like this. Even more to make it usable by a layman, which was what brainiacs like Blaine called normal people.

It stood to reason, though. Blaine had been a scientist for Silph Co, a long time ago-and some people had accused him of being a member of team rocket, but Silver believed him if the guy said he didn't know-but he'd split ties with the company over some questionable practices in their Pokemon-cloning research. He'd been a genetic cryptographer, or something like that, and that meant that he was in charge of writing down and keeping track of a Pokemon's DNA, every little bit and piece of it, and numbering them, so that he'd know how to put it back together again.

There was nobody better than Blaine with numbers. It came from having such a good memory, he'd said. Silver would give him that much. He'd certainly never met an old guy so sharp.

In good faith, he gave it a few more hours.

By six he was just about ready to throw down the handset and stomp on it. The green signal light came on then, though, and he heard what he'd been waiting to hear all day.

"Genga- -ait i- - -ark," the receiver garbled at him in a murky tone.

"C-fairy sha- make per- hi-pots," a voice responded. Alone the words, or fragments thereof, meant nothing. Altogether, though, they conveyed enough of the code-words he knew to listen for.

The signal cleared up a little, and he heard everything he needed to hear. "I'm in posti- -ear the target," a far-away sounding, hiss of a voice said, only slightly more clearly than it had been.

"-estroy t- Battle Tower." the receiver said in a more robust tone. It was tinny and distant, garbled by imperfect reception, but he recognized that voice. It was the voice he'd heard on the TV a few weeks ago. That PLF guy, what was his name? Getsome? Givesis? Gitsot? Something stupid like that.

He leaped to his feet. He was just slightly off the trail near Route 3. He could be at Tojou Falls in an hour, if he had to. He threw Salamence's ball to the ground and took to the sky, without another thought.

"Chickaaa," Chikorita chattered in his ear, nearly drowned out by the wind.

He looked back. The squawk-box shrank to a tiny black speck in the grass behind him. "Eh," he grunted, "I'll get it later."

* * *

She watched K do one of the few things he did well, from the back of the truck.

"Sandslash! Fissure!"

He wasn't much to look at, being on the short and husky side, his spiky green hair an absolute mess, but he was a solid trainer and he had very strong Pokemon. The attack turned another thousand cubic meters of solid rock into dust, and with far less noise, and far more precision than explosives. Which wasn't to say they wouldn't be using explosives, but stealth and accuracy were necessities for the time being.

Strange as it was, she found that she missed the smell of kerosene and ammonium nitrate. Olfactory sense was not something that was easily reconstructed, apparently. The problem was, she couldn't tell if she was actually smelling anything or not. She remembered what the large painted drums were supposed to smell like, but not so precisely that she could instantly call it back into memory. It didn't sting her eyes or make her throat burn, because she just didn't seem to have those things anymore.

Just that thought alone made her angry.

"K," she called. Like a reluctant but faithful pet, the young boy gave his Pokemon a rest and returned it to the ball she only allowed him to posses when she required him to use it. He came crunching up to her through the rocks of the cave they'd been making since mid-morning, his body-armor weighing him down heavily. The boy wasn't built for it at all, but that was one of the reasons she made him wear it. It was one of the reasons she'd made him second in command, as well.

In a normal outfit, a good lieutenant was a faithful and strong man, who all the inferiors wanted to be. A person who respected the men just as they respected him. He helped to take both some of the responsibility, as well as the affinity away from the true commander of the outfit, as a good leader should never be loved, but instead feared and respected because of that fear. And the men did not love her, but they certainly did _fear_her.

But K would never have the respect of the men, because he was just a teenager with no experience and even less sense, that she had shanghaied without a second thought when she'd began to rebuild her mercenary crew. The men despised him more than anything and his appointment to second in command had been a slap in the face to all of them. That amused her greatly, but it had also served it's own purpose. Their bitter hatred of him, meant that if anything happened to her, K would get his throat slit in very short order, or worse, because the mens' fear of her was the only thing that had kept them from killing him already.

K hated her too. She could see that in his eyes, every time he looked at her, but that was just fine. She didn't need K to be anything more than a warm body to carry out tasks. Except maybe a source of amusement, as he was going to be shortly. He was stuck where he was, anyways. He knew that if he tried to leave her service he'd be just as dead by her own hands as he would be if he tried to pull anything while her back was turned.

She had never bothered to learn anything about him, and likely would never. She didn't even know his real name, she thought, as he stepped up onto the rear gate of the flatbed truck, and into the gated trailer where she was standing. She had given him that name, "_because it comes after J, which is what you'll be doing from now on." _

When he had finally come up in front of her, handing her back the poke ball, then stepping back and standing rigid just outside of arms reach (something he had learned to do as a safety precaution, in very short order) she clipped it to the auxiliary belt on her overcoat, and laid her mechanical grasper upon the lid of the nearest drum. "Smell this, K."

He made a face that looked like he might've balked, but didn't dare. So the smell was pretty strong, she guessed. He'd probably smelled it before he even got onto the truck. "Y-Yes, I can." he answered.

"I wasn't asking you," she glowered.

When he stepped forward, she stepped aside slightly to let him perform the task. Dutifully, but with great wariness he stooped a bit over the lid and made a show of sniffing. When he was done, he nodded. He made to step away, but her metal claw caught him by the elbow.

"What does it smell like?"

K winced. "I dunno. Gasoline, I guess?"

Petroleum distillates did have a distinctive smell to them. That answer probably would've satisfied most people, but it simply wouldn't do for _her_lieutenant to be so unversed in his explosive compounds. "No. Smell it again. Take the lid off this time."

"I don't really think-"

She put the sharpest point of her steel thumb above the bony protrusion of his elbow, the olecranon, and drove the tip as deep as she could wedge it into the soft meat of the synovial joint-capsule, doing her best to crush a massive cluster of nerves most people called the Funny Bone, but generally did not find so funny.

"That's good," she remarked, over top of his scream. She neither wanted nor needed him to think. "Do as I say."

He did as he was bid, and screwed off the cap from the drum, with a little effort, bashing his knuckles against the rim a few times, as she'd temporarily hampered his ability to grip. He again made a show of sniffing.

"What does it smell like?" she reiterated, gravely.

"It still smells like gas," he said meekly.

She didn't want to know that, though. She wanted to how the sharp tang of kerosene made his sinuses burn. How the sour, noxious smell of ammonia stuck to the sides of his tongue when he breathed through his mouth. How the huff of combustible fuel made him feel dizzy and lightheaded. She knew that it smelled like gasoline! With a snarl of frustration, she slapped him across the mouth with her real hand. She got a rush of satisfaction from actually feeling the sharp contact with his face, and she suddenly wanted to hit him again, so she did. The backhand sent him reeling to the floor of the flat-bed.

"Put your fucking face in it! Really smell it."

He looked ready to just lay there and cringe, as he often had in the early days of their working relationship, but he'd learned much better in the times since, and taken far too many stomps to let that happen now. K collected himself, and stood. He did not do her bidding with much enjoyment, but he did it.

Stooping, he took a deep whiff of it and came away, quite unsurprisingly, coughing and hacking with his eyes pouring tears.

"What does it smell like?" she asked, her voice a stone command, but her thoughts a bitter plea.

She could see the bewilderment and hopeless anger on his face, though. He had no idea what she wanted. "It smells awful!" he said, nearly a curse between coughs.

Not knowing what else to do, she resolved to just solve the problem by hurting someone, which was something she always relied upon, because it always worked. She reached out and caught him by the hair, seizing a knot-full of it near the base of his skull, and dragging him sideways, off balance. Her steel fingertips, meanwhile slammed down on-top of the drum, biting into the lid like a can-opener. With a single jerking motion, she tore a three foot strip of sheet-steel from the top and sides of the barrel, and the soupy gold and white mixture sloshed out in volume at their feet. "If you think it _smells_bad, wait until you taste it!"

And she shoved his head into the opening she'd made, paying no mind at all to the jagged, sharp edges, and held him there, kicking and thrashing, until she was sure that he'd swallowed some. She pulled him out, and kicked him flat onto his back off the tail end of the trailer, blinded, screaming, bleeding and puking.

She hopped down after him though, and not so much helped him to his feet as pulled and dragged him back out of the long tunnel, back to where she'd left a small squad of men waiting. As she expected, they laughed at the sight of him, sodden with kerosene and retching his guts up as he howled about how badly his eyes burned. She practically threw him at the man who laughed the loudest.

She knew they wouldn't help him unless she made them, and she was much better served by keeping K alive and well than letting him go blind or die. J did not base her life around the possessions she held, but she had never been reckless with them. All things required up-keeping.

"Take him back to the ship and get him cleaned up," When the man did not hop to her orders as hastily as she'd have preferred, she looked at him very scathingly and added. "If he loses his eyesight, so do you." She held up two hard, metal fingers to make her point obvious.

Once he'd scrambled off, directing K by the scruff of his collar, she turned to the rest of the crewmen there present. "We move in five. Get the support teams ready."

She might've added addendum to that, but she'd already made one threat. Failure would mean very severe and excruciating punishment, and she was certain they were all quite aware of that. A strong leader didn't make threats to validate their claim, regardless of whether they were true or false, and she had always observed that notion very closely, so she didn't bother to tell them that she would consummately eviscerate anyone who disobeyed or failed to carry out her orders.

She returned to the tunnel, snatching up a fair sized hunk of rock on her way. After a long trudge, she neared the truck and deposited the stone onto the floor of the driver's side, before stepping up into the cab. She removed a length of carbon-graphite filament wire from a utility compartment in the cannon on the back of her arm, and twisted it around the carbide cutter attached to the feeder head, severing it like dental-floss. She carefully twisted and looped the nearly-invisible wire around the bottom of the steering wheel, cinching it as tight as she dared.

Micromonofilament was convenient in that it was very strong and very thin-so much so that you could use it to tow cars but still literally carry miles of it on a thread-spool. Therein was also it's danger. It was much, much thinner than even a human hair, but stronger than anything of comparable size which made it exceedingly useful, but had the unfortunate effect of making it wickedly sharp. One quick tug and you could easily cinch your own finger off if you weren't careful.

She tied the other end to the adjustment lever beneath the seat, then tested her work by trying to turn the wheel. The filament bit into the Naugahyde grip-cover, but would not allow the wheel to stray too far to either side.

Pleased with that, she methodically wedged the stone under the dash so that it pinned the accelerator to the floor, then placed the keys in the ignition, and checked her watch. She let the last few seconds tick off, then turned the ignition over, and hopped out while the wheels were still spinning.

The truck finally caught traction after spitting up gravel and blowing out three tires. It sped down the tunnel on the fifteen remaining ones, all the same, though.

She knew she should've put some more distance between herself and the explosion. She was well aware of the effects of concussive forces in enclosed spaces, but for some reason she just couldn't stop herself from standing there, and watching the truck vanish into the darkness ahead of her.

At the opening of the cave they were nearly five miles from the Battle Tower Complex at Tojou falls, by road, twisting and turning as it did through the rural, undeveloped stretch of land between Johto and Kanto. It was one of the few places that you could pass from one region to the other without being noticed. They'd come from the mountains just for that reason, and it was for that same reason that they would go back that way, when it came time to leave the region, and make their escape. Through the ridge, though, it was less than a thousand meters, and their entire approach would be masked by the overhead rock as well as the roaring descent of Tojou Falls.

As far as K had dug into the northern face of the ridge put the inner-most reaches of the tunnel roughly five or ten meters to the inside of the Battle Towers hydroelectric dam, a below-ground substructure set back into the cliff-face in order to take advantage of the free energy source offered by the millions of gallons of falling water.

When the truck hit the back of the cavern, the resultant explosion would blow through the power-plant and cripple the foundation of the building, as well as automatic electronics systems such as security, communications, and most importantly: fire suppression. The blast would start fires on a massive scale throughout the base of the building, driving any occupants either out, where they would be caught by the fire-teams, or up, toward the top of the building, where they would be met by the ship, when it closed at low altitude, and either blew off the top of the building when the men on board found nothing of value, or rammed and boarded it like a merchant vessel, if they opted to loot more properly.

There was no bang, and she'd expected that. It was too close to perceive any real bang. It was more like changing the channel of a television on max volume to a channel with nothing but snow. The was just a sudden and omnipresent wall of hissing, roaring air and dust that hit her like like a freight-train. It didn't come any less forcefully in light of her foreknowledge.

A bullet-like chip of shale deflected off the metal plate in her face, and the shock-wave should've sent her sailing away like a discarded newspaper. She weighed considerably more now, though, and was held upright by more than just her own balance. Computerized gyroscopes kept her footing solid, even as she slid backward several yards.

The heat came next, like a blast furnace, and that she was both more and less prepared for. Like water, the hot expanding gasses followed the path of least resistance. Fire, smoke and disintegrated rock and metal rushed at her like a scalding torrent. But the end of it her coat was smoking, and actually on fire in a place or two, but she continued to feel next to nothing, just the same way she had since she'd woken up on that examination table in Black City.

She patted herself out without alarm and looked around, feeling no real need to squint eyes that weren't really her own against the dust and heat. There was still fire everywhere around her, but toward the end of the tunnel where she'd sent the truck she could see light of a different sort. Faint, though still present. It was daylight, or something like it.

The smoke in what remained of her lungs was more a reminder of better days than it was painful. Scrubbers in some auxiliary system evidently had no trouble with it, anyways. She did not feel short of breath, even by the time she'd worked her way through the rubble and wreckage at the tunnel's end, and emerged into the devastated lobby of the building from the rear, just as her men were entering through the blown-out facade, their Pokemon swarming around them, raring for a fight.

Though she was a lone figure, and shrouded in black, roiling smoke for most of her approach, none of them made to harass her, even though she wasn't supposed to be there. Even the Pokemon were terrified of her. There were no mistakes made as to who she was, and more wisely, no accidental attempts against her. Some of them looked pretty stunned to see her, as though maybe they thought she'd somehow been the origin of the explosion in a more direct way.

The support pillars to either side of the main plaza were close to sheared through, it seemed, and their loud, ominous crumbling sped their ascent up the staircase. The Battle Tower was no so much a tower as some other buildings in Kanto were, but the absence of a surrounding city practically made it monolithic. They swarmed through the complex, wrecking everything they crossed, as she pointed fire-teams down divergent paths, spearheading the assault.

It wasn't long before either she'd sent away all of her followers, to plumb the reaches of the collapsing facility, or they fell behind on the tiresome march up the fifty-story flight. Left alone, she brought her Drapion out, and together they crashed through the final landing at the top of the stairs, practically displacing the frame of the thing; Drapion with his chitinous carapace, her with her mostly metal one.

She'd noticed something on her way up, that perhaps her men had not noted in their appetites for destruction and looting. The tower was well furnished and commanded all the luxuries and appointments a Frontier Brain might've expected, but what it had lacked thus far, by her own reckoning, was people.

She'd not yet caught sight of any support staff, or trainers looking for a battle, or any of the Towers' resident battlers, for that matter. The had been nobody on the first floor, in the lobby, no bodies, no evidence of a panic or struggle against her men. Nothing.

She hit the Frontier Brain's personal study like a tropical storm, going straight for the empty desk and bringing her cannoned-up arm down on it like a sledge. The old desk burst apart in a hail of rosewood splinters and leather binding. Drapion worked a circuit of the room, tearing apart and shattering shelf after shelf of books and priceless art in just a few seconds of fury.

"Where IS everyone!"

Drapion's dissatisfied roar matched her own howl of rage, as she spun to face men and Pokemon alike who were only now catching up with her as they scrambled to the door, to see what was the cause of the screaming. It was a mistake on their-part, they realized as she and her Drapion bulldozed past them, and she had to stop to wait for a mercenary nearly twice her size who didn't think it was his place to stumble over himself to get out of her way.

She glanced up at him, and bared her teeth, and though the man did his best not to seem impressed, he looked like he was getting ready to block a punch. Not that it mattered, since she'd have likely just broken any limb he chose to interdict between them, but the blow did not come from her. Drapion's segmented tail whipped around like a slap, and punched a dagger-like barb under the man's jaw, visibly contracting and undulating as it pumped in venom.

Too staggered to react, and nearly paralyzed by the onset of poison, she merely swept the man gently aside with a palm, and let him topple to a heap on the floor, where he foamed at the mouth in a fit of shock, likely to die. She took the few steps back into hall that she'd wished to before, and again, without leveling any threat, she turned to face her men. "Find me _someone_."

They all scrambled to do her bidding. Well, all except for the man who was laying on the floor and clutching at his swollen throat. She felt nauseated as she watched him, laying there, trying desperately to breath, but unable to. When she blinked, that darkness beneath Lake Verity roared back at her, as loud or louder than the explosion downstairs, and she could only just stare at him, eyes wide and full of distress, for lack of other options, until she finally jerked her head away,and departed to let him die in his own way, both thankful for the privacy granted her by the opaque visor, and furious for her need of it.

She met the oppressive downdraft of her rebuilt ship's turbofans on the complex's roof, though it was currently cloaked. Like her, the massive airship had been reclaimed from the mountain lake in Sinnoh, and been reconstructed with both painstaking attention to detail, and mindfulness of expanded utility. It's cloaking capabilities were more efficient in this iteration, using the same system of thousands of integrated cameras and projectors recording and displaying images to and from opposite sides of of the hull, to create a transparency illusion, but now enhanced by a reactive lighting system as well, built into the main turret of the battery.

The old ship would've been casting a huge, ominous shadow over the complex, as it was by no means a tiny vessel, and did block out a considerable amount of sunlight even when very high in the sky. Just because it looked invisible didn't mean it wasn't still there. As it was now, an intense spotlight, closely mimicking the direction and angle of the sun produced a more believable disguise. There was still an artificial quality to the camouflage, as well as the strange shadows the spotlight cast, and there were certainly more effective ways to accomplish the invisibility effect, but this would serve, and was among the more cost-effective measures.

She'd heard of using very powerful magnetic fields to literally bend light around an object, and render it invisible to the naked eye, as well as radio range-finding detection, which would've been a deal more useful, but was both prohibitively expensive to produce, and required power-consumption that a free-range vehicle, particularly an airborne vehicle of such size, simply could not provide.

Still, as cunningly thrifty as the methodology was, To J, it was as visible as the back of her own hand. Sensors built into her visor picked out the immense fore and aft decks of her frigate in a wash of IR colors, alongside calculatory range-data. Plus, the wind beating her hair and coat down straight was a dead give-away.

She raised a hard, metal digit to the com in her ear-lobe. "Come into broadside position, now. I'm coming back aboard." It was an order, but it felt like an excuse to her hearing of it. She'd found no one in the tower. No people, no Pokemon. She'd received no express orders about what to do to anyone or anything she might've found, but neither had she received express orders about that not to do. "Send a clear message. You have unlimited authority," seemed-pretty clearly to her ears-an invitation to deal maximum damage, including fatal.

Her jobs had never strayed into murder on such a massive scale before, but she had felt completely up to that, and now she was disappointed. Truthfully she'd never needed to kill anyone to accomplish her goals, but that had never stopped her from doing it when it was convenient. She'd bumped off an International Police agent a few years ago, for sticking his nose where it didn't belong, and she'd condemned more than just a few crew-men to death by either cutting them loose in hostile territory to fend for themselves when it was a better option to cut and run, or by doing them in herself for some grievous failure-usually by her proffered method of throwing them off the ship at great height. She'd come pretty close to ridding herself of some of the pesky do-gooder trainers that always seemed to crop up where she needed to conduct business, once or twice as well.

J did not tolerate failure well, and she had never been a forgiving woman. She wasn't aware that she'd ever before been senselessly cruel, per se, so much as unflinching and brutal in her approach. But she didn't see any reason why she couldn't start now, aside from the fact that it was senseless to destroy the things that already belonged to you. She'd roughed K up earlier, and there was every chance that she'd killed another crewman simply because she'd thought it would please her to do so. Both of those things were unwise where her position as commander of this mercenary brigade was concerned.

Getting her hands on a trainer or-even better-a Frontier Brain would've really been something, though. It would've been good to share a little of her own suffering with someone or something she had no intention of putting to good use, later on. She would've been very slow and meticulous about it, for a certainty. Still, that wasn't going to happen, it seemed. She had very little notion that her men would return with a live captive. Someone had denied her that satisfaction. She wasn't sure who, yet, but she would find out.

Her blood boiled like tar, thick and viscous with the lethargy of the dead. Sometimes she wondered if her blood still flowed at all, or merely clung to her veins like plaque and sludge while some arterial system of mechanical design carried out the task on it's own. Only the anger reminded her that she was still living, anymore. Machines didn't get angry-at least she hoped they didn't. She gripped her fist tight, and wrung her fingertips against her palm, as though massaging a lump of coal, polishing the focus of that single emotion to a diamond.

"Someone have K waiting to meet with me on the bridge," she snarled into the mic.

Sure enough, K was waiting for her when she came aboard, eyes pink and near to swollen shut, but careful to stay two steps out of her grasp as she walked toward him, matching each of her own strides with a backward step of his own. K had wised very quickly to that, it seemed, and she could not doubt the sense of it, as she was sure she'd have blacked one of his puffy eyes for him with her clenched fist if she'd been given any sort of opportunity.

"Can you still see?" She asked, brusquely.

K was timid about his answer, knowing that was what'd somehow earned him her wroth, earlier. He sought completeness in his response, but there was also a certain amount of haste he'd come to understand she expected of him. "Yes," he responded after a moment's burbling, coiling his legs in preparation to spring backward, should it become necessary.

He didn't know why it would, but there was a lot he didn't understand about J, or his situation. He understood that it was a delicate thing, his position here. He teetered on the edge of misery, but over that edge was disaster, and there he could not make himself go, no matter how brave he might've once been. The problem was, he had no idea what might push him off the ledge, until it was already bearing down on him. There was no escape from this, or her, and so all he could do was persist.

He was tough, and J hadn't broken him. Made him suffer, made him very, very wary, sure. Granted, the corpse-like appearance of the woman terrified him, all on its own, and she practically owned him and his Pokemon in all but a single sense of the word, and that alone was what kept him going, day in and day out.

K still had his heart.

He'd been a fierce trainer. A passionate battler, even before he'd began his journey. He was skilled, and talented like very few could be, because he was dedicated and persistent like very few could be. He was thorough, methodical, and utterly indefatigable when it came to making himself and his Pokemon stronger. He subjected himself and his Pokemon to punishing regiments day in and day out. One trainer had even called him cruel, early on in his career, but he didn't think that was true.

K doubted he'd even had a concept of true cruelty until the unfortunate day he'd crossed paths with J. He'd never taken pleasure in the pains associated with the hardships, only the joy of conquering them.

Still, all that would not matter, if this kept on. He'd never hit his limit before. He'd subjected himself and his Pokemon to so much, just to become stronger. The long nights, the punishing drills, the self-imposed regimens, none of that compared to this. He had much in reserve, but there was something awful in J, some infinity of black that he could not see an end to, save his own. She would outlast him, he knew, and that filled him with a whole new kind of terror.

He didn't believe J would kill him, but that kindness would only be to persist in humiliating and dehumanizing him, until there was nothing left of who he really was. Then again, he doubted it had much to do with him, at all, really. There was nothing about J that made him believe she had a personal vendetta against him. He'd never even met her before she'd press-ganged him into her crew, he was certain of that. He wasn't sure that made it more or less cruel, though.

"Then tell me what you see, there," J pointed, gruffly toward the main display-screen; a huge monitor set in the forward facing wall of the bridge. The ship had been wisely redesigned with a pressure-hull that allowed amphibious landing, but disallowed external windows, so the Conn relied on cameras to provide visual data.

K's eyesight was still bleary, and it stung to leave either eye un-squinted for too long, but he could still see the battle tower complex, busted holes in its glass facade piping fire like the fluted burner of a gas oven, belching a pall of black smoke into the sky. The ship was in a stationary hover just a click to the west, hiding in the sun.

He thought about how best to respond to that, mindful of J's footing. She didn't wait for an answer, but instead turned to the battery commander. "Arm the main guns." If she couldn't take her time on a prisoner to satisfy herself, she would simply use a proportionate amount of overkill on the structure itself.

It could be argued that her ship, like the battleships and juggernauts of yore, was more a mobile gun-platform than vessel. The monstrous beam-cannons that ran the length of the fore sub-deck were the largest independent structures on the ship, and likewise drew the most power during use.

K felt a heavy thrumming under his feet as the charging coil ran the length of the weapon's priming chamber beneath their feet, exciting the particle condensate within a magnetic suspension. A low sound, just barely at the edge of perception, grew gradually into a hum, then a loud drone of harsh electrical overtones, that made his teeth buzz around in his mouth.

"Fire."

The sound stopped abruptly, and K thought for a moment that the pop of sudden silence had deafened him, until the whole ship let out a screeching roar. On the view-screen golden lines of plasma condensate burned through the air, causing wavering heat-distortion that made the building undulate and dance. Each of the golden beams sliced across at diagonals and bisected the tower, like the many deadly cuts of some sun-borne samurai. He half expected the building to just fall to pieces, cut perfectly into slivers, but it didn't.

It imploded, with a sound that K had never heard before. A great, muted cough of a sound, and the walls sucked inwards, like a diaphragm, then crumbled into dust, as though they had never been there at all, leaving the whole building to collapse onto of itself, straight downward, in a guttering, morose pile of burning wreckage. It all happened in the span of a few seconds, but it came with such a sense of horrible finality that K had to suppress a shudder.

J turned back to him, searching it seemed, for some kind of indication of what he thought of it all, and evidently liking none of what she saw on his face. He wondered if she wanted him to pretend he wasn't repulsed by her display. He couldn't have known that she was looking for some reflection in him of the satisfaction she could not find in herself.

He did understand seething anger when he saw it plain on her face, though, even obscured as it was by her visor. K thumped into the console as she lurched at him, and he sprang back, leaving him nowhere to retreat to. He reached out for something, anything to save him.

It came then, like a shooting star.

A streak of teal across a smoke-grayed sky. Not a peek of clearer air, as he'd thought initially but a Pokemon, huge and magnificent. "Salamence!" he shouted, pointing over her shoulder as she came for him.

She spun at once, and glared hard at first, but then that expression turned into something different. Something that was somehow more unsettling. A flash of recognition, and something deeper, like, desire-though not of any kind he'd ever known. It took him a while to peg it exactly, but when he did, he felt like he was watching Captain Ahab spot white flukes off the starboard bow. The look was avarice, cruelty and obsession all rolled together into a type of lust that was darker than ink.

J stole away from them then, and off of the bridge, without another word. He followed her as far as the cargo-bay, whether out of some fear that she would physically compel him if he didn't, or some morbid curiosity of his own. Then he could follow her no further when she bashed the cautionary orange 'hatch open' button, lowering the loading ramp into open air, with nothing but a hundred meter drop at the end of it.

To K, the opening screamed death, but J was made of different, more unstable stuff, it seemed. She took a lunge for it. He wasn't sure he'd have stopped her, even if he'd managed to say anything before she disappeared over the lip of the hatch, but he found himself wondering what would become of him without her, until she appeared again on the blue wings of her own Salamence, spiraling the thermal down-draft of the ship. It was not the most relieving sight he had ever seen, but it was quite a bit better than being left in command of this gang of cutthroats and thieves, who would almost certainly do what J merely threatened to without a second thought.

There was another nearby, though, who did not hold such mixed feelings for J's appearance. Silver, as he watched the woman and her Salamence-larger in wingspan than his own by a slight margin, but roughly as toothsome-emerge from a window cut out of the sky, did not feel the slightest bit of relief to soften the sharp tang of battle joined as his opponent fell upon him in a momentary eclipse of the sun.

He expected her to square off with him, to launch an attack, such as he would be prepared to deal with through use of appropriate aerial maneuver, or perhaps counter with an appropriate move-command of his owe. But there was no streak of fire or blast of energy, or any such thing. Instead the other rider directed her Salamence's flight path into an insanely terminal dive, and cannoned into him like a broadside, mid-air, vehicular collision.

The jarring nature of nearly a two tons of flesh and scale and bone colliding with you at speed had a way of throwing you for a loop, and he suspected that nearly the only thing that kept him from losing consciousness was the fact that there was nearly a hundred feet of open air between him and the ground, and he didn't think that today was the day he wanted to become a greasy spot on the forest floor. Somehow he managed to keep Chikorita on his shoulders.

He willed himself to stay lucid, even as blood ran down into his eyes, and he hoped desperately that it was his own, and not his beloved starter's. He was granted no reprieve, though.

It was an aerial melee then, and nothing seemed to move violently around him, spinning and whirling and crashing together, but never in it's proper place, as Salamence tumbled over Salamence, and ground rolled up to where the sky had been. The two dragons were locked in mortal combat with one another, all snapping maws, kicking legs and beating wings, and it was all Silver could do to stay mounted, clinging tightly to his Pokemon's haunches.

Both dragons roared fire into each other's faces, and clawed at the others body with eight sets of razory claws, paying little regard to their riders as they were practically driven mad by massive burns and lacerations. Of all the dragon Pokemon, Salamence were the most fierce and aggressive. The other Salamence's trainer, though, was seemingly as bloodthirsty as her Pokemon, and he realized when he felt someone grabbing at his coat that she had come over her own dragon-type's back to get at him.

He thought immediately that she was foolish, and insane, and that he would easily throw her off if that was how she wanted it. He didn't particularly want to take the dive, but he had no problem helping someone who'd ambushed him to the ground from here. It wasn't until she really got ahold of him that he realized just how difficult that would actually be. Though she looked to be half or less his total mass and weight, she compensated with a pound of sheer frightfulness for every ounce of muscle he possessed. With that, came a much clearer concept of just how much trouble he was really in..

The thing fighting across Salamence, tooth and nail to get at him was hardly a person, in so far as he could tell, and the mere sight of her added a whole new level of urgency to the whole state of affairs, as well as a sickening layer of the macabre. The look of her was like a nightmare he'd remembered from his boyhood, wherein he'd been beset by some monster, whom, like this woman, bore all of the most frightening features he might've been able to imagine as a child, yet pieced together with the same competency, as a child might, in an amalgam that might've otherwise seemed pathetic were it not clambering towards him on all fours, slavering like a beast.

When she got a hand on his arm, she locked down like a Sharpedo. Vice-like pressure made his radials creak together as they were mashed painfully by the metal gripper. He tried to shake her off, but it was no use. Another hand crept for his throat, and he knew that if he didn't get some separation between them, pretty soon she would be just as inseparable from his windpipe as she was from his forearm.

Silver had never thought of himself as a gentleman. In fact, most people found him gruff, crude, and a bit on the obnoxious side. Certainly there were those who had warmed to him, and he to them in kind, but he did not generally go out of his way to behave in a mannerly fashion for anyone so long as he could help it. Still, he wasn't a complete bastard, and he did hesitate for a moment before unloading a massive right into her face. His very large and meaty fist should've knocked her senseless. Instead, it only flared in pain like he'd socked a brick wall. He thought at first when he looked at her, and saw that her visor was all but shattered, that he'd just gotten more of the polymer face-shield than he had of her jaw, and so he swung again and regretted the decision, when the vizor busted away to reveal the bare metal plate bolted to her cheek beneath.

"What the hell are you, lady?" he yelped as he tried to fend her away with his now bloodied and possibly broken hand, shoving at her face and shoulders as she tried to surmount the mass of writhing dragon-flesh between them.

J only snarled and snapped at him, though, and he jerked his hand away just shy of her biting off one of his fingers. She couldn't quite get ahold of him from where she was, and he could see that her long coat was snagged in his Salamence's claws, and held fast at least for now, but he could hardly see it stopping her for much longer, with the incredible force she was putting on his arm. Especially if she managed to get a two-handed grip on him. Maybe her other arm wasn't some crazy power-tool like this one was, but he wasn't going to risk it.

He didn't exactly come up with any bright ideas on how he was going to get himself and his Pokemon free of this clinch, twisting and tumbling through the air as they were right now, but in the end, he didn't have to. His Pokemon were there to back him up. Chikorita came ripping over his shoulder on tiny little hooves and shot a point blank Razor Leaf attack right into his crazed attacker's face.

The attack succeeded where he had not, somehow, causing J to flinch away, and shift her weight awkwardly. He shoved, then punched, then kicked twice, and eventually succeeded in forcing her back. Silver was immense and muscular as any man, but it took all of his strength to manage just that, and she still would not let go of his arm. When Salamence finally disengaged his foe, though, with a withering Fire Blast to it's eyes. Their aerial tumble evened out some.

His Salamence did not waste time in dispatching his unwanted passenger, either. Twisting his head around, Salamence snapped down on J's shoulder, nearly swallowing her whole arm, and torso down to the breast, and thrashed from side to side with maddened aggression The display of brutality would've likely torn any normal person in half, though while it didn't accomplish that, it did tear her off of Silver rather authoritative.

Unfortunately it also made something in his arm pop out of place and his elbow bend sickeningly in the wrong direction. Knives of pain shot up and down his arm, and all he could manage to make himself do was hold the limb close to his body with what little strength remained in it. He wanted to scream for Salamence to throw her away, and fly for safety before the other Salamence came back, but he just couldn't open his mouth from the agonized grimace that was locked there, so his dragon Pokemon just worried away at their attacker, biting her again and again about the middle, sinking in teeth the length of knives, and shaking his head back and forth wildly.

Each chomp brought a gout of orange-ish blood and some strangely milky machine fluid, but none of it seemed to be doing any real damage to the incensed woman. Even now she was bashing and grasping at Salamence's jaws, in an ultimately fruitless, but spirited attempt at keeping them at bay, and still somehow giving as good as she got. She'd succeeded in knocking out a few teeth from what he could see, but it wasn't until that metal claw of hers shot out and cracked off one of the fin-like extensions of his crest with a powerful wrenching motion that she finally shied him up some.

The joke was on her, though, because the dragon just spat her out into open air, and let her plummet out of the sky. Then, graciously, they stole away, Salamence cutting northward as fast and steady as the wounded Pokemon could manage, which was not particularly well. The skirmish with the other dragon had left him pretty badly cut up, even given the bony, vestigial shell on most of his underside, and the beating he'd taken dispatching J hadn't helped matters. Silver though he could see blood leaking from one of Salamence's eyes, and wondered if the woman hadn't blinded him, but the blood could've been anyone's, at this point.

He was just thankful that they were away...but that was when the sky split apart, and what felt like Arceus' Judgment rained down on them.

Truthfully, the volley of plasma had been only a near miss, but Silver, who'd experienced the flames of the legendary bird Moltress, had never felt anything hotter, and never heard anything louder than the white white heat and ripping sound the beam left in the air. He fell to Salamence's back and covered his head with his one good arm as the flying Pokemon rolled away and cut low to to skim the forest floor.

"STOP FIRING!" J roared at the firing team back on the ship, knowing that her coms were broken, but too angry and wounded to really consider it. She held her midsection as her Salamence rode the wind blindly beneath her. She'd been lucky enough to get herself at least near enough to her own Pokemon in the descent that it had heard her call, and caught her. Now was not the time to count herself fortunate, though.

She dug in her coat for a something, and cursed loudly when she found most of her belongings to be broken or crushed, but she retracted the Burn Heal, bent as it was, and jammed what was left of the hypodermic applicator into a patch of exposed skin that had been de-scaled by their would-be prey. She'd have healed her Salamence's wounds as well, but her Full Restore was completely shattered, and the Max Potion she kept in her harness felt like most of it was stabbed between her ribs, so she dared not try to extract it.

It would clear up the severe burns Silver's dragon Pokemon had left on Salamence's eyes, though, and that would be enough to get them close. That was all she needed. First, though, she needed to stop the ship from blasting him and his Pokemon to fine red mist. The shot was hers to take!

Though she could not see the ship anymore, the thermal imagining capacity of her vizor decimated by Silver's huge fist, he flew to where she knew they would see her, waving them off frantically with one arm, as she cradled her leaking thorax. Only when she heard the tell-tale thrumming sound of the cannon fade away on the wind, did she give the retreat signal, and then spiral off to take care of her other problem.

Her head clearing of the initial rush, and somewhat sobered by the severity of her wounds, she decided on a more tactical approach. The matter was now more one of dealing the final blow than it was of savoring the process. She'd gotten her licks in, and so had he, but she was determined to strike a permanent end to the exchange that marked her unarguably the victor. It was not good to leave things unsettled, after all, and one had to strike while their opponent was off-balance, with surety. She knew she'd left them ailing...

So now she would catch him and down him, and if she was lucky, kill him and his troublesome Pokemon at leisure. But whether it ended up being leisurely or not, they were going to die.

She lowered her face to Salamence's jaw, and hissed, her words bubbling up from her crushed chest cavity like air from a flooded bellows. "Get them."

Salamence bared a sleek, toothy smile, and ripped at the air with powerful wing-beats, lacking no tenacity in spite of its wounds. Like her, Salamence hated to lose.

She'd lost his profile in the trees as he'd fled, but where her eyes failed, she knew Salamence's would succeed, so she flew high to look down for signs of moment. It didn't take long to spot them, his own Salamence gliding weakly, just over the tops of the trees, keeping it's profile flat and unobtrusive to the eye. Unfortunately, it's natural camouflage was meant to be seen against the backdrop of the sky, and not the forest floor. Salamence zeroed in on them in no time, and they soon swooped low, gaining on them inexorably.

Silver could see her, not twenty yards back, and she didn't waste any time making fancy maneuvers or pouring on speed. He knew that his Salamence could manage neither. This was all going to boil down to who was willing to finish the other one off, he knew, and if it came down to it, he wasn't about to let himself get killed just because he couldn't bring himself to do the same to her.

"Now!" Silver howled, and held on as tight as he could.

He and Salamence literally changed places, as the dragon Pokemon put everything it had left into a quick midair roll and a snapshot Hyperbeam attack fired straight backwards.

The ray of glimmering energy hit home, and J's Salamence spiraled sideways into the balcony of the forest, KO'd without a doubt, and taking the insane woman with it. J had fired her own shot, though, and though he hadn't realized it at first, he could not fail to notice the tree-boughs whipping him in the back as Salamence failed to complete the full roll.

He saw Salamence's wing too late to do anything about it, had he even understood what was happening. The once red blade had become a calcified gray as the petrification spread across and through the helpless Pokemon, turning it to solid stone.

Silver, who had never bought into the idea, was quite surprised to find his life flashing before his eyes as he waited to smash into the ground at high speed with the immense Pokemon-statue to forever mark his grave. Not the least of those thoughts was the detached wonderment and disbelief at this half-robot, half-woman monster who'd come from a door in the sky to end his life.

There was a fear for his Pokemon, too, but he'd already done all he could to address that. Salamence was going to hit the ground like a ton of granite no matter what he did, and the irony of that wasn't lost on him. Chikorita, he'd already thrown as hard and far as he could manage. It's lightweight body granted by grass-type nature would undoubtedly give it a much softer landing than what he'd enjoy. He had to hope that the Pokemon on his belt would be safe inside their poke balls.

Strangely, though, some often unconsidered thoughts crept into his mind during those final seconds. He'd never been an all-star father or husband by his own reckoning. It wasn't that his heart had never been in it. Dammit, he'd loved the hell out of that woman! The day his son had been born...well, he wasn't willing to admit it had made him weep, but his eyes had gotten a little moistened by pride, perhaps.

But how long had it been, since he'd seen them face to face? Five, Six years? How much of a fool had he been to stay away all this time?

"Arceus, I miss 'em," he muttered to himself.

Despite his dissatisfaction, he found himself oddly at peace-resigned, even-with what happened next. There was a moment of shocking and profound sensation, as Salamence propelled him through the thick bough of an elm, and crushed him into the soft, mossy bank of a river-bed like a one ton sledge driving a six foot railroad spike in a single, miss-aimed blow, that bent the spike out of shape, but mashed it in anyway. The impact was followed by a long, lingering moment of pressure and pain, but it wasn't so bad, really, because immediately after it came the nothing. Not cold, or even relieving like he expected. Just a nothing. A total shut-down. An end.

Long, dark and forever.

* * *

"We have a very serious problem," Charles Goodshow said, clutching the receiver like it might come apart in his hands, "and I need all of you to report back to Indigo Plateau as soon as you can manage it. No, I've already gotten in touch with them, and they're on their way, currently. Yes, them as well. Champions, Elite Four, I intend to call forth several high-ranking gym-leaders, I need _everyone_that day-to-day operations can spare at Pokemon League Headquarters by the time I arrive." The president gave a huff of impatience. "She's right here next to me. We're already waiting for the plane to leave the tarmac."

Cynthia waited across from him in the private leer-jet, her own in truth, hands folded casually over crossed knee.

"Yes, I'm well aware of that, Lance. I wouldn't be giving out an official directive if this was anything short of an emergency." There was another long pause. "They're young adults, and trainers besides. Let them know that the camp is going to be cut short, and that the league will compensate them for travel expenses, if need be. Honestly!"

The bearded man gave a long series of grunts and murmurs of acknowledgment. "That will have to suffice, then. I'll let you know more when I see you in person. Goodbye."

When the phone-call was over, he placed the satellite phone back into its receiver He sighed, then, and for a moment, looked his age, even in shorts and a reversed baseball cap. "That man can could charm the skin of an Arbok, but Arceus forbid you try to tell the man anything without him asking a million and a half questions."

Cynthia tutted. "People dislike having to hear bad news, without any explanation."

"Odds are he knows more about it than I do!" Charles harrumphed. "Him and his G-Men. Buncha spooks, the lot of em."

Cynthia rolled her eyes. The much lauded Pokemon G-Men, were something of a joke outside certain circles. Those stories of shutting down criminal operations across the globe were the sort of thing that impressed children, maybe, but everyone knew that the G-Men were just childhood friends of Lances, whatever their actual qualifications might've been, and in her eyes that cast some serious doubt upon them. For her part, it was even money that the G-Men were just a bunch of Lance's groupies that he sent out to dredge up trouble so that he could personally put a stop to it and thus enhance his own status. That was the sort of thing you could expect from an up-jumped ace-trainer who was only handed the title for being popular. The Championship was only a game to Lance.

The president seemed to pick up on the look, though, and gave her a chastising wave. "Lance might give you the too-cool-for-school act, but he's a real straight-shooter. I'd have never given him the Indigo title, if he wasn't. The man is no pretender. "

Either way, the credibility of his friends at least, was pretty suspect to her. Word was that at least one of them was quite the oaf, in fact and had nearly allowed a couple of criminals to poach a Moltress after leading them to it's roost, of all things. Still, whatever the real story was behind the G-Men, it seemed to impress Charles well enough, and he was no fool.

"I suppose you wouldn't have," she offered, her voice cool. She'd met Lance once, and honestly, he _had_ seemed like the genuine article. Maybe _too_ much like it, she genuflected. "Still, if he had a man on the inside, it doesn't seem as though it did him much good. Besides, if Lance knew half as much as you think he does, he'd be the one calling to beg _you_for a meeting."

She'd been with him in the office, this morning, when the telephone call had first come in from Kanto. Thus far nothing had broken on the news, which was a miracle in this day and age of cellular cameras and internet video, and that had to be thanks mostly to the rural location the disaster had taken place. One video had turned up, but fortunately it had been rushed into the lobby of the Indigo Plateau welcome-pavilion by a junior trainer who'd just happened to be nearby at the time. The receptionist had possessed the foresight to send the video straight to the top,(and was likely to see a huge promotion for it) and Mr. Goodshow had received the attached video in a message straight from the source.

The Kanto Battle Tower had been completely and utterly destroyed. Nobody knew just how, or precisely when and the grainy video didn't exactly help in conjecture, but since it was the only footage of the actual event, nobody could've been any the wiser.

"Delete the video. Hold on to the gear itself if you can! Do whatever you have to do to placate that kid, and keep him from going back out there to tell all his friends! Take him on a tour of the facilities, Offer him a league-paid vacation to Goldenrod, Put him up for a week in my personal suite, I don't care what it takes, but I need eight hours to make it back and run damage control on this thing, before the story goes public!" Goodshow had raved, storming all over the office and gesticulating wildly at the stunned receptionist.

It seemed like she'd just about swallowed her tongue, but so far the story hadn't broken.

When they hit the runway at Viridian International, the world probably know what had happened, but with luck, they would have no idea how. It would be up to Charles Goodshow, and his consortium of Elites, Leaders, and yes, even Champions to craft that story.

She hoped that Lance, her Kantonese counterpart, for better or worse, would be able to put as charming a face on this, as he did upon himself.

* * *

Ash just stared back blankly as he was screamed at. It wasn't as though he couldn't hear, or that he was ignoring the DI. The man was practically nose to nose with him, bent almost double, the brim of his cavalry hat pressing annoyingly into Ash's forehead and knocking the bill of his cover high.

He just didn't really care. Not necessarily about what the DI was telling him-It was important stuff, actually. Ash looked when the DI made knife-hands, careful not to completely break eye-contact (which was an important skill to learn if you didn't want to wind up on your ass.) He responded with a clear and alert "Sir", when he was asked a question. He didn't salute, though, because the DIs "Worked for a living" and would turn you inside out if you did that.

But the yelling, that part didn't bother him. Not anymore. Not like it had. Unconsciously, for the first several weeks, he'd flinched away, or scrunched his neck whenever anyone got in his face, and chewed him out. He'd never been yelled at when he was little. His mom raised her voice, but rarely at him, and it was really more of a timid shriek by comparison to the sort of bowel-loosening hollering that Surge's men got up to. It stood to reason then that it had really rattled him at first. Now he just let the DI lean into him, and didn't so much as bat an eyelash. The discomfort of someone pushing into his personal space was gone.

Not that he loved to have someone blasting him in the ears point-blank, but now mostly he'd just accepted it as a fact of life. If he messed up, someone was going to jump up his ass over it, but then that would be the end of it. He'd fix the problem, and go about his business like he was supposed to. It wasn't that hard.

Baily was presently giving him an ear-full of shit over having cut across the green to make it into the mess.

Okay, he'd fucked up. He wouldn't do it again. Simple. It was important stuff to know. It was chow-time, though, so maybe he wasn't paying as much attention as he should've.

"And if I were you, I'd find some way to rectify that, wouldn't I?" Baily snarled

Ash wasn't so sure he understood what, in particular, Baily was referring to, so he kept his trap shut. It proved to be rhetorical, in any case, and soon Baily dismissed him with a brisk, "Get the fuck out of my face, Ketchum!"

Even though he was the one in Ash's face, the recruit did as he was told, and turned on his heel. Through the double-doors and a trip through two of the serving lines brought him to his seat. It was Echo Squad's table, though only he and Melody sat at it. Two of their number had called it quits a week ago and what Doc got up to during chow-time, Ash could only guess. He had to be getting his grub in somewhere, but it certainly wasn't where anyone could see it. It was really the only time any of them had to themselves, though. Nobody gave a crap what you got up to during chow-time, so you could pretty easily sneak off without any of the DIs giving you a hard time, so long as you didn't get caught red-handed.

Still, he and Melody had cooked up some theories. They usually shot them back and forth when they first sat down, as if trying to excuse his absence in front of company.

"I bet he's doing a million push-ups, or something." Ash sortof pictured Doc as a robot underneath a well-defined suit of skin, who's only function was to perform repetitive exercises. It stood to reason. Even injured as he was, Doc was still doing more chin-ups and suicides than anyone else during morning drills.

Melody rolled her eyes. "I bet he's spankin' the Mankey." As far as she knew, that was the only thing boys sought out privacy for.

Ash crinkled his brow, and forked up some more S.O.S. "Why would he spank his Mankey? I don't think he even has a Mankey."

"Not an actual Mankey." Melody corrected with a giggle, "You know..."

He didn't, so she changed the euphamism. "Chokin' the Combusken?"

"Sounds a little violent." Ash said, brow still kinked. He didn't think Doc was that sort of person. Asshole, sure, but Pokemon-abuser?

"Bopin' the Bisharp?" Melody tried again.

Ash shrugged, still missing the point. Melody made an instructive gesture, though, and then Ash's eyes did widen a bit.

"Oh," he said after a pause. When it sank in, he added emphasis. "_Oh."_

"You finally understand why they dragged Feinman from Alpha out of the main Barracks on the first week, and gave him permanent latrine duty for _Walloping his Wobbutfett_, now, don't you?"

He did! "Ugh! Super-gross. My bunk was right underneath Feinmans!" He pushed his tray away from himself, quite displeased. She stole a few choice bits from it before he changed his mind and went back to eating.

"So what was Baily bustin' your chops for this time?"

Ash waved the question away as unimportant, as he collected a glob of stray brown gravy with a bit of bread. He wouldn't have had an chance to answer right then, anyways, because Surge burst into the mess just then and did what he did best, which was bark. "Listen up Ladies! We're starting Assistive Training today!"

He could tell from the roll of murmurs and moving lips that the same question that came to his mind was on everyone else's. That too, proved pointless. Surge and his instructors had a way of making things painfully obvious, if you just waited.

"Ketchum, you just volunteered. Get up there." Bailey growled, suddenly behind them.

A week ago, he might've protested, or more foolishly, questioned that, but he just stuffed the last of the gravy-soaked bread into his craw, and made his way toward where Surge was waiting.

Whatever Assistive Training was, he was pretty sure he wasn't going to like it, just from the impression Bailey had given him, but certainly didn't expect to be clapped into cuffs the moment he took up position in front of the huge gym-leader.

"This week, you will rely on your Pokemon for everything," he explained to the lot of them, as he fixed the inflexible steel cuffs to Ash's wrists, then crouched to do the same to his ankles. "You will not run, you will not climb, you will not jump, you will not even make your bunk, without help from your Pokemon We've seen how strong you are as people, but now you're going to show us how strong you are as trainers."

The cuffs were tight, and wouldn't let him move his hands more than about ten centimeters or so apart. The leg-cuffs were a little less restrictive, but he could still only take very minor steps on his own. A thin chain connected the two, so that he could not reach much higher than his neck.

There was a hush in the room, when his concern came to him. "What about going to the bathroom? Do we need our Pokemon to do that?"

Laughter surged up from all the recruits, but it was a legitimate concern to him, so he ignored it.

"Your restraints are in the front for a reason, Ketchum," Surge explained, to another chorus of guffaws. "But for everything else, you will rely on Pokemon assistance."

Surge reached for one of the poke balls on his belt, but Ash turned away, slightly. He wasn't ready for that particular Pokemon yet, so he angled his hip slightly. Surge seemed confused a little by that, but if he found it to be a huge problem, he didn't say so. He took the ball closest to him and popped it open for Ash. He really could've reached it himself, but not without effort. He would have to adjust his belt later, so that it was easier to procure poke balls in this way.

Psyduck spilled out, there, right in front of them and Ash checked his sudden rush of frustration. He'd taken Psyduck in agreement that he would train him, and work with him, just the same as Misty was his Kingler. Even if this wasn't the ideal situation for it, he was still bound to that, both by his oath and by his ideals as a trainer.

Still, though, finishing the rest of his meal with Psyduck's help, as Surge ushered him back to his seat, proved to be an ordeal. He sat there, doing his best to bob and weave his mouth into proper alignment, as Psyduck fed him at the end of a spork. Several weeks ago, this all would've been very humiliating to him, but now it was just arduous.

"Ow!" he griped. "Food goes in your mouth, Psyduck!"

"Psy-y-y!"

"When have you EVER seen anyone eat with their ear?"

"Psy! Psyduck!"

"Well then be more careful!"

Things went a little better from there-on out, but he still ended up with gravy all over his face, and chipped beef dangling from his chin, by the time they were finished. Melody was laughing at him, as her Wingull delicately bumped her straw into place so that she could lean over and take a sip of it, full of the poise and balance that a true flying type might've possessed, but the flightless water-foul was hopefully bereft of. He ignored it, though.

"Can I have that napkin?" he asked Psyduck hopefully. Unfortunately the deranged Pokemon hadn't the spacial awareness to realize that his napkin was tucked under his glass, though, and promptly dumped it into his lap.

"Nice," Melody commented, snarkily. "Now you look like you peed your pants."

"_Now you look like you peed your pants," _he shot back, his voice nasal and derisive. "That's so funny_, really."_

Apparently, though, gravy-face did not do a thing to enhance his dismay, as she just laughed all the harder, so he just looked back to Psyduck. Patiently, he gestured towards his face. "Well? Help me out, here."

Psyduck dabbed clumsily at his face, while he batted ice out of his lap, and after a minute or so, they'd worked him back into a semi-presentable state, though the massive stain on his trousers wasn't going to vanish anytime soon. He took it in stride, though. "Thanks. Good job," he offered, encouragingly.

Psyduck was already busy trying to eat the napkin, though, and Ash had to suffer the handicap of his handcuffs as he tried to fight it from the Pokemon's bill. "Gross, knock it off!"

He only managed to get most of it, and he looked at the Pokemon in a huff. Psyduck pushed Misty's patience more often than not, and Ash had to admit that he was a little humbled by just how difficult this was going to be, in the long run. Just now didn't seem like the best time to take more of a stab at it, though. Soon, Surge would have them up and out of here, and busting their asses at one thing or another, and he was almost sure that it would involve running jumping and climbing, none of which he was going to be able to do without a big and powerful Pokemon to help him move around.

...unless he wanted to bonk Psyduck on the head a couple of times. He had some pretty awesome psychic-type moves up there, if you could just rattle them out. But no, he wouldn't do that, no matter how desperate he was. The trick would be getting Psyduck to figure that one out on his own. Without head-trauma, preferably. He really just wanted to get Psyduck into some low-pressure battles that he might actually win on his own steam, but there hadn't been much time for that recently, since he was stuck in corps training for the time being.

He somehow doubted that there would have been much in the way of low-pressure battling on Mandarin Island, though, so it was six of one, half-dozen of the other.

He blew out a sigh as he sat back in his seat and watched Psyduck. The water-type seemed to sense his gaze and returned one that seemed equally thoughtful, or perhaps equally lost, as the case might've been.

The Corps had changed him. Not in a bad way, really. He felt sortof like he'd had little pieces of him scoured off. The best way he could think of to describe it, was like he'd been this rock, caked in dried up mud, that someone had thrown in a fast current. Gradually, the water had dissolved that mud and broke it away, eventually just leaving a smooth stone that the current couldn't abrade any further. It wasn't especially discomforting, now that the process was mostly complete, but it wasn't really a cathartic feeling, either. He supposed that in the strictest sense, he'd gotten a handle on the whole discipline, thing, but he felt more like he'd been stripped down to bare essentials, somehow. And granted, that was really all he need for the time being: just to stay healthy and keep his nose to the grind, until this was over.

But it made him so _restless_. In his heart, he just wanted to keep going on his journey. He missed his friends now, more than ever, and this strange feeling of separation from Pikachu, even though he was literally right by his side, made that lonesomeness ever more present. He didn't feel alone, but he did feel _secluded_somehow.

Melody caught him at a disadvantage when he looked up, and realized she'd asked him a question. He shook his head to clear it, then tried to look more attentive. "Huh?"

"Feeling okay?"

Ash nodded. He supposed that in the grand scheme of things, Corps training was not the most desperate situation that had ever befallen him. Not even close, really. Probably not even in the top ten. He could be patient. He could make it. "What are you gonna do when this is all over?" he asked her.

"I'm just worried about getting it over with right now," she said, nearly mirroring his thoughts on the matter.

They had no more time to discuss it, though, because as Ash predicted, Surge had them all shuffling from the hall as best they could in chains, and into columns out on the green. Strangely enough, the task for the day ended up not being their usual grueling and tiring workout, but instead, an easy jog. At the time most of them were capable of keeping, it was something of a protracted march, but still, it was just that, much to Ash's surprise.

They all filed out, one column at a time from the compound, across the green and through the gate which was opened for them, then out onto the open roads of Route 6. Ash thought they must've looked like a chain-gang of convicts who's prison bus had broken down, but honestly, he was thankful for the change of pace.

They humped it along in short, tethered steps, until eventually surge called for double-time, and they could no longer keep the pace required on their own. Poke balls burst open up and down the line, and even Ash had to rely on one of his Pokemon to carry onward at the speed required.

He decided not to put Psyduck back, though, and simply hoisted the duck up onto his shoulder, even as Snorlax was hoisting him up onto his own. He laughed when the duck panicked at being put up at such height, and latched onto the bristly side of his head, nearly knocking off his cover. "We're good. Relax."

When everything was finally settled, he glanced over to see how Melody was doing. He was surprised to find her in the midst of some sort of hopping, skipping, quick-step beside him, making up speed of stride with distance of leap. He watched her do this for a while, somehow bewildered by it, before interrogating her. "Why are you doing that?"

She glared up at him, as he bobbed along on his huge Pokemon, a twinge of jealousy, and more than a bit of annoyance in her voice. "Wingull isn't exactly going to be able to carry me on his shoulders, now is he?"

Ash snorted. "I'd let you come up here, but I don't think you'd wanna sit next to a guy who pees his pants. Don't you have any other Pokemon?"

She wondered if Ash took her for a complete idiot. "A Shelder and a Gulpin. Suppose they'll be any better at it?"

In a flash of red light, Ash's Tauros appeared beside her, trotting in stride. Ash himself didn't say anything, and she thought about refusing him regardless, but Tauros hooked her by the chain that bound her hand to foot, and swung her from one massive horn, under and around, until she flopped across his back, like a slung backpack

She shot him a look, when she finally righted herself into a more comfortable side-saddle position, but he shrugged her off, as if to say "_He did it, not me."_

The march into town was so freaking relaxed that he couldn't help but thing that there was some sort of trap waiting to be sprung, but it never seemed to happen. They took to the streets like they owned the place. There were stares and giggles, but he'd just spent three weeks with instructors who could make paint peel with a snarl, so that was nothing. He didn't think they were so unfamiliar to anyone as a concept, really. Everyone seemed to know the drill instructors on sight, and everyone in Vermillion knew the LT. Some people waved as they passed on the street, but none of the recruits were foolish enough to wave back, lest they risk the ire of the DIs tromping along at their flanks. Ash nodded at one or two though, in spite of his better judgment, because it was the natural, friendly thing to do, and he felt like it had been forever since he'd seen someone who wasn't as worn out and miserable as him.

Nobody climbed up his ass for it, if they noticed.

Eventually, they came to the wharf, a place which he was familiar with, if only recently, as the place where he'd watched the biggest opportunity of his career go cruising off into the distance. Even now, he subconsciously tried not to look to far out to sea, for fear that his own wanderlust would have him diving into the water, and trying to swim for Mandarin before anyone could catch him.

He found that the feeling faded in him, though, as they made it a little ways on past it, near the commercial docks, to a strange place that Ash didn't think he'd payed much attention to coming in to Vermillion. Surge drew them back into columns, but curiously did not look

"You grunts are going to learn something, and today, it's not just a new way to tell what pain feels like. Today you're going to learn about the world we live in, and what it will mean if that world changes, but first, I need to introduce you to someone."

They were standing in the midst of a limestone plaza set out over the shore, lined with wrought-iron benches and weathered bronze railing. Centrally located was an immense statue, some eight meters tall, made of well polished granite. A stately man with square jaw and set chin, possessed of the sort of facial hair that was popular in bygone centuries, but which did not make him laughable.

"This man is Lucas Vermillion, and he changed the shape of the world with a single idea. From all accounts he was a piss-poor trainer, but I'm sure even dumb-ass grunts like you can see there's a giant fucking statue of him here, and not one of Red, or Champion Lance, or anybody else who's got two brain-cells to rub together when it comes to battling. The man was a visionary for a totally different reason. Does anybody know why?"

Nobody spoke or raised their hands. The best Ash could venture was that it had to be something so profound that they'd named the whole town after him. Or else he was one of those strange people who was named after a town. Which was better than being named after a periodic element at any rate, he thought back.

"And that, right there, is the reason all of you needed to make the trip out here. Today, we have all but forgotten a critical truth of our lives.

"Lucas Vermillion wasn't a famous battler, or some revolutionary or something. He was simply the first man to employ Pokemon in industry. Before poke balls, before any of your fancy Pokemon transfer-systems, that let you zap Pokemon to you from across the world, before the idea of Pokemon and humans even living in the same places was more than a novelty-back when Pokemon training was far more rare than it is today-Lucas Vermillion was using Machamp to raise homes and buildings, Dewgong for ship-laying, Onix to dig mine-shafts and tunnels and irrigation. He circumvented nearly three-hundred years of industrial progress, by saying "Hey, you know what, Pokemon are really good at doing things. Instead of toiling on our own, we should work together to improve things for everyone.

"Of course, I'm not so sure his idea turned out to be quite so magnanimous as all that, but the point is, that from that single idea, was birthed the world we know today. The idea of Pokemon training wasn't exactly new at the time, of course, but until Lucas Vermillion did what he did, the concept of a blended society, in which Humans and pokemon not just lived in the same place, but actually worked to build the same home for themselves, hand in hand, that simply did not exist in the same way it does now. Lucas saw that industry was going to become the core of our society, and through that proposed merger, so too would Pokemon.

"Everywhere you look, there are Pokemon and people, doing the same jobs, carrying out the same tasks, cooperating with one another, and most of us take that completely for granted, because it's always been a fact of our lives. Look around you right now. You were carried here on the backs of your Pokemon, because you could not do it yourselves. Your Pokemon were there to pick up the slack, without complaint. Did any one of you stop to think about how you would've gotten to where you are right now, if we took the clock back 300 years? Bear in mind, maybe one in fifty of you might've been lucky enough to train Pokemon The rest of you would've been so busy with back-breaking labor to keep yourself fed that you wouldn't have had the time to train Pokemon of your own, if you even had the ability-remember this is before poke balls, now! Not many of you would've made it here.

"Pokemon are an intrinsic part of our modern society, and we simply forget, at times, how fortunate we are that they are here for us. Like you would have, without the aid of your Pokemon, floundered on the roadside, so too would our society without Pokemon. They are _that _important. The Route that we came to town on? Planned by people, but Pokemon helped to build it, in no small way. Most of the original structures in the downtown area that surrounds you are still standing today, and they were designed by Lucas Vermillion and built by _his_Pokemon!

"We've been doing a lot of PT, and that has gotten tempers, and egos very high, as I'm quite aware, but this week is going to be a reminder to you grunts. You, however talented, or courageous, or stupid, or hard-headed you might be, you are nothing without your Pokemon, in a very literal way. They only rely on you to direct them. For now, to make sure this all sinks in, I want all of you to read the quote on this plaque, and memorize it," he said, gesturing at a decorated metal plate on the concrete base of the statue

They all huddled around it for a bit, and then filed out to make the return trip. The words were very true and Ash didn't think that he would forget them, since they were also very good, but Surge drummed them all into repeating it aloud, like a cadence, as they made their march back to base.

"_On the ocean of life, I am not the ship, but only it's captain. _  
_My Pokemon are my vessel, and as such I must preserve them._  
_Or else I should surely drown at sea or languish in it's tides."_

* * *

"You ever get the feeling that this is more for them than it is for us?"

It had been three weeks now, and they'd fallen shorter and shorter of defeating any of the elite four, since their initial attempts. It seemed as though every day the five high-echelon trainers who'd invited them here put their skills and abilities just a bit farther out of reach of mere mortals such as themselves. She, like Ritchie, had accepted the invite, hoping to come here and improve her own skills. Instead it seemed like they were increasing the skills of the Elite Four, and Champion, instead. Twice, each of them had faced off against Lance, and none of those four times had either of them managed to even defeat his opening Pokemon, Altaria.

She didn't answer at first, but Ritchie just sat there and pat Sparky's head and the Raichu chattered back at him, and neither he nor the disturbing question seemed like to disappear anytime soon.

"Like, how do you mean?" she asked, even though she understood perfectly well.

"Like...I dunno. Maybe they just invite the best trainers they can find, every year, because they know they're the most likely to face off against them in the league finals? They bring those guys here, then they battle them so many different ways, until together, all five of them can beat everything that trainer can dish out. Maybe it's just another way the champion evens the odds."

She supposed it was possible, but did that really matter? If they were here battling, face-to-face, it wasn't like they could hide any more from Riley and her, than they could from them. It was macro-cosmic, of course, but it was no different than what a trainer would suffer in a regular training season. A new tact, or some unorthodox move-set that was very effective against the current meta-game would undoubtedly be planned for, and prevented the next go-round, even if it was game-changing at the time of it's introduction. The consistently good trainers changed their strategy often and without warning. Unpredictability was the key asset of any real trainers arsenal. The only problem with that, she could see, was they were dealing with expert trainers with vast amounts of skill, and ten times their level of experience. They'd already narrowed both of them down to 'what they were likely to do given x situation' several days ago, and spontaneity was all they had left. Still, it should have been a two way street, and they should've at least began to understand some of the motives behind at least a few of the Elites, but she could no more say what kind of battlers they were, beyond simply being very good ones, that any of them definitively were, much less use that information to battle them with. She'd spent too much time just trying to do her own thing as best she could. She felt a little dumb just now realizing it, but she tried not to let it show. Instead, she turned a chilly look on Ritchie.

"Maybe we're just not doing a good enough job. I mean, if you think they're comparing notes on us, then don't you think we should be doing the same?"

"Right, I was thinking that, but..." he rubbed that back of his head, clearly embarrassed. "I feel like I have to work so hard out there on the field to keep up, that I don't really have time to think about what's happening at the other end. I keep trying to make the battle go at my own pace, coz, well, I mean, that's what you're supposed to do, right?"

Ritchie pulled softly on his Raichu's curly ears. "But that doesn't really leave me a whole lot of time to be critical. Against such strong opposition, it's a struggle just to avoid being reactionary."

She guessed she could understand that. It wasn't as though she was going out there, and examining every little aspect of her opponents game, as she was doing her own thing. It wasn't as relaxed as something like chess, in which there were set moves and riposts that could be calculated. There were patterns to follow, of course, like anything, but it took mental faculties on a whole other level to be able to see the whole battle unfold from start to finish, the way Red had once claimed to be able to. There was a gym-leader in Unova who claimed to be able to do that, as well, but she did it without actually battling, so Uranium didn't think that counted. There was too much going on at once for any normal person to condense it down that way, she reasoned. Maybe there was some skill or sense she was lacking, but she just didn't think it likely.

"Maybe we're thinking about it all wrong, then. Maybe we're just becoming too familiar to them. I'm sure the fact that there's five of them, and two of us isn't making that any easier, but maybe we just need to switch it up."

"Like how?" Ritchie asked, lifting both of Sparky's ears high, as if in curiosity.

"Go into town, get some different Pokemon."

Ritchie's smile lessened somewhat. "I'm really not one of those guys who got swept up into that 'gotta catch em all' craze." He pointed to his Raichu, then the five balls on his hip. "Sparky, Zippo, Rose, Cruise, Happy, and Levi, my Tentacruel. I only have one other Pokemon besides that."

"Yeah?" Uranium felt her brows slam together. Kantonese trainers all seemed to be pretty similar that way. Personally, she'd caught hundreds of Pokemon. Not all different, of course, and certainly not all as exceptional as the ones she frequently battled with, but she'd traded ones she wasn't particularly enamored with for Pokemon she wanted, caught and released many more such just to log them in her pokedex. Kantonese people had a whole different outlook on the capturing of Pokemon it seemed like. She decided not to get involved beyond making the displeasure apparent on her face. At least all of Ritchie's Pokemon were fully evolved. "What kind of Pokemon?"

She was hoping he'd have something phenomenal, like a Latias, or something, but Ritchie just shrugged. "Just a Fearow. Wendy."

"Wendy. Like Windy, as in the wind?"

"Yeah, how'd you guess?"

"It's corny, just like you. Just like I'm guessing that Rose is actually the past-tense of rise, like a bird, and has nothing to do with flowers."

Ritchie stuck his tongue out. "Well, maybe Wendy is actually the name of some girl I used to have the hots for, and I just didn't want to tell you."

Uranium seriously doubted that. "So you named a Fearow after her? That's pretty messed up."  
_  
_Ritchie laughed. "Don't judge. People cope in strange ways, sometimes."

"Wendy must've been a real bitch," Uranium snorted.

Ritchie grasped his chest theatrically. "Tore my heart out,"

Uranium rolled her eyes. "_Anyways_, maybe it wouldnt be such a bad idea to go into town and swap some out. Even if you can only swap _one_."

Ritchie seemed to be thinking about it for a while, and then shrugged. "Alright. I'm willing to give it a shot. Let's head for the Pokemon Center."

They checked out of their lodgings in the visitors accommodations beneath the stadium, and left the coliseum to visit the south-central Pokemon Center, signing 'for reasons undisclosed' into the log-book before departing.

The trip took them only a half-hour on foot as they were, and when they got there, Uranium swapped out the Pokemon she had on hand for her Breloom, Cloyster, Scrafty, and Magnezone, keeping only her Haxorus and Braviary.

When she met up with Ritchie back outside, though, he looked troubled. She thought maybe it was because he was having second thoughts about her plan, but then she realized that he was on the phone with someone.

"Yeah. Right. No, I get it. Yeah, she's here. Alright, I'll let her know. You too," he said, in terse acknowledgment, before pocketing his gear.

"Who was that?"

"Lance."

"What'd he want," she gasped, instantaneously blushing. "The Champ has your number?"

Ritchie wondered if she was more mad that the Champ hadn't called her, instead, or just generally flustered. It was like she had this knee-jerk reaction over Lance that countermanded everything about her. Early on in the first week she'd choked on a piece of fruit during breakfast when Lance had addressed her, and later that same week she'd suffered a nose-bleed when the temperature had gotten into the high nineties and the champion came to practice without a shirt on. Her training had seriously suffered that day.

Normally, though, she was blunt and outspoken and had this 'I-Don't-Care-What-Anyone-Thinks' personality. It didn't really rub him the wrong way, or anything, he was easy-going about most stuff, he guessed. It was probably why he and Silver got on so well. "Yeah. He called with some bad news."

"Bad news?"

"Yeah, you're not gonna like this..."

He explained what was going on with the League, and what'd happened back in the mainland, trying to provide as much detail as Lance had given him, which hadn't been much at all, and for good reason, he had to assume. The most crucial component of course, was what it was going to mean for them.

"The training camp is over?" Uranium whined, as she collapsed onto her rump on the the curb of the sidewalk, her hands lying uselessly at her side, turned palm up.

Ritchie plopped down beside her, feeling just as bummed. "Fraid so. Looks like this trip was for nothing."

"That blows."

They sat for a while, just like that, Ritchie picking at a hole in the knee of his jeans, and Uranium just looking utterly dejected. He thought it best not to bring up that if she was right about the Elite Four using them to scope out this years likely challengers, than they'd given out more than they'd gotten from this training camp. Instead he gave her a nudge after the silence got to be too much.

"So what do you wanna do now?"

Uranium let her head rock back. She let out a long, miserable sigh. "I dunno. Probably go back to school, and try to do finals before the semester ends."

"School?" Ritchie made a face. "Really?" He could come up with a whole list of things he'd like to be doing right now. Most of them were battling with the Elite Four like he'd planned, but none of them involved School.

Uranium just sighed again, and shrugged. "If the camp is over, then so is my excused absence."

Ritchie frowned. "Really? Coz, I mean, Lance told me they weren't planning on telling anybody. It's not like they're gonna know, is it?"

Uranium looked over at him, sidelong. "What're you getting at?"

Ritchie laughed. "What I'm getting at, is that School is totally lame, and it's almost summertime anyways!"

Uranium rolled her eyes, and muttered to herself._ "Yeah, well, I guess it's not like my friends at the battling club are gonna miss me."  
_  
Ritchie suddenly frowned. "Why not?"

Apparently he'd heard that. Taken aback, Uranium barely stopped herself from saying "because they don't exist," and instead rounded on him with: "What did you have in mind? The ferry won't be back till tomorrow, anyways, so I've got at least till then."

Ritchie could only shrug. He wasn't one of life's planners. He just sort of went where things took him. He hadn't even really planned to end up here. It was just something Silver had put together for him, when he'd offhandedly mentioned that it would be cool. He hadn't even known Silver had those sorts of connections until just a few weeks ago.

Yes, he definitely flew by the seat of his pants, perhaps more-so than most trainers. He didn't always know where he was going to end up the next day. It always ended up being someplace interesting, at least, even if it wasn't exactly a vacation spot. As long as he made it there in one piece, and his Pokemon were there beside him, it made no difference to him. Still, he spent a lot of time in the islands, and he knew his way around. "We could go over to North Mandarin."

"The Big Orange?" Uranium scoffed. "Hows that? You just heard me say the ferry won't come till tomorrow."Ritchie snorted. "What, you dunno how to surf, City-Girl?"

She didn't, she realized after a moment. Unova _was _a coastal region, but unlike the sprawling sea-shores and open capes of Kanto, her homeland was host mostly to the harbor walls and thick concrete breakwaters of industrialized oceanic trade. She had seen the ocean almost every day living in Castelia City, but she had never truly seen a beach until coming to Kanto. She was pretty sure her Cloister could manage it, though, even if she turned out to be hopelessly inept at it. "Alright, so what then?"

Ritchie didn't even realize that they were up and walking, until that point. He'd been losing himself in the idea of crashing along out on the open sea. The stretch between North and South Mandarin would take them nearly twenty kilometers. A small stretch compared to the distance between here and the mainland, but it would mean at least an hours worth of nothing but the water in all directions. He'd spent a lot of time out on the water, and he was pretty fond of it.

"I dunno." He wasn't quite sure how to say that he didn't have anything in mind when he came up the plan. "What sorta stuff do you like to do?"

Her frown told him plainly that she liked to do the sort of thing they'd been doing at the coliseum. "We could find a nice spot on the beach to battle each other, I guess."

Uranium just managed to look look even deflated. "I don't really want to battle you. No offense, but you're no Champion Lance."

Ritchie only laughed it off, though. He'd been watching her train for several weeks now, so it really didn't offend him at all. He wasn't just positive he could beat her and even if he did, it wasn't the victory he'd really been thirsting for for all this time. Honestly, he was just as put out as she was. He felt like he'd been so close to defeating Lorelei, even if it had just been that one time. "Well, once we make it there, I'm sure we'll find something to occupy us. There's plenty to do in the big city."

Uranium halfheartedly agreed to that, and they set out on their way, Ritchie leading, perched atop Levi, and Uranium seeming to at least manage to keep her dignity as she clung to the spines of her Cloyster. They rode for a time and gradually Uranium became more comfortable. Before long, Ritchie found himself humming an old sailing tune that he'd heard Silver bellowing a few times before-though he omitted the bawdy lyrics-as the waves provided a steady tempo.

To Ritchie it seemed like the trip was over in an instant, but Uranium must've seen it otherwise, because the first thing she did when they reached the wharf was complain.

"This is _it_?" she said, unimpressed. "The _big _city?"

"The Big Orange." Ritchie reiterated.

The city of North Mandarin, so colloquially called, was a huge city in comparison to some that neighbored it, and it was slightly bigger than the largest Kantonese city Celadon, being home to nearly a million Orange Islanders. Still, it didn't really leave much of an impression on Uranium, who was from the largest city in the world. Castelia City dwarfed the humble metro-center by a factor of ten.

She crossed her arms, knowing that he couldn't really understand why she was so put out, but still not quite willing to forgive the backwater of its inadequacies. She was still good and steamed over this whole camp termination thing, anyways.

Ritchie, though, was all jovial about it, as they walked off the pier and into the city proper. Though it wasn't much of a city by her standards, it was much more bustling and modern than Mandarin Island. Cars honked and chugged along in the crowded streets, and bright neon signs tried to out-glow the sun in the long shadows of office and commercial buildings. The place didn't smell much like a city, she realized, after they had been walking for a while. It was much more open of a place, lacking the truly claustrophobic closeness of Castelia, which she guessed must have let much more air flow through. It didn't smell all that different from the sea, except here was the smell of open-fronted restaurants with that spicy island-cuisine she'd come to find would sear your mouth if you didn't ask specifically for a milder dish, since coming here two weeks ago.

By contrast, Castelia smelled like burning fuel and pavement, and the food didn't smell anything like it did here. When she tried to remember what food smelled and tasted like back home, though, all that came to her was an unpleasant scent of overused cooking oil.

The Orange Islanders were a vibrant people, not at all like their button-down, ultra-practical Kantonese kin. All things in Kanto seemed to be made for a purpose, and were humble and reserved in their scope and design, where as the things in Unova were flamboyant and grand and ostentatious, like her people, because that was the Unovan way: Bigger, Better, more Marvelous! The Orange Islands seemed to be somewhere in between. Not quite possessed of the borderline-hubris of Unovan sensibility, and not quite so steeped in quiet tradition as the mainland, the street-stalls and restaurants and store-fronts of the city, though simple and unobtrusive, were a wash of color. White and Yellow-striped umbrellas covered hand-painted food-carts selling skewers of grilled onions and peppers. Covered canopies of gold and sky-blue canvas that rippled in the wind provided shade for outdoor cafes. Curtains of the most outrageous shade of neon-green fluttered from a high-rise window of a deep-red brick apartment complex.

Even the streets refused to be the same gray as everywhere else. Back the way they'd come, the white sand of the Mandarin sea-shelf dusted the pavement, while to the north the ruddy orange soil of the island hills collected in the gutters.

It reminded her of some of the other places she'd visited on her journey as a trainer-not in a rekindling sort of way, but just in a way that reminded her of how far she'd come. To have gone from something less than a nobody, to wandering around the other side of the world on someone else's dime just because they thought she was a really awesome trainer who deserved the chance to do that. It was pretty crazy thing for even her to imagine.

Not that she felt like she didn't deserve it. She'd worked her ass off to make it this far. Granted, she'd have preferred to be perfecting the methodology for defeating the elite four and taking her crack at Lance, but maybe Ritchie was right. Maybe some R&R would do them good. She'd kept things pretty well nailed together since she'd gotten here, and maybe it was time to just cut loose, and do whatever the hell she felt like. She had to actually pause for a moment, to shake off the responsibility she'd been shouldering for what felt like the past six months. She let her head waggle from side to side, flapping her pale hair like a banner.

Then she smiled.

People always told her that her smile made her look like a psycho, because she had a thin-lipped, wide mouth smile, and teeth that were on the small side, resulting in a full-face sneer that showed a lot of her gums. Evidently, Ritchie found it just as disconcerting as most, because his eyes went wide at the sight of it.

Truthfully, she looked every bit the wild-child, to Ritchie. Her hair was never well-kept like most girls he'd known, and she didn't even bother to keep it out of her face. Even when she whipped it from side to side (nearly clipping him in the eyes) jagged bangs fell right back to where they'd been. Very little about her was girly, actually, aside from her fan-girl crush on Lance. Her nails and knuckles were battered and dirty, and from the time he'd met her she'd never taken off her ragged-looking hoodie. At first, he'd taken her for a bit of a hard-case, but over the course of the camp, he supposed, she'd gotten more comfortable, and become something else.

She was, through and through, a _battler_. He'd met people like that, before. Silver was, in a way, much akin to her. They both thrived on battling. Matching their Pokemon against the toughest and roughest without a second thought, or a care in the world. He still remembered Silver waltzing off to take on Moltress, without a worry on his mind, just like it was no big deal, like, _Yeah, Gonna go battle a legendary Pokemon, just for the hell of it. No big whoop._

Though she wasn't particularly tall nor muscular, with her eye-patch and that serial-killer grin, It seemed like Uranium almost cut a more intimidating figure than the six-six, two-hundred-and-some-change, built-like-a-brick-shithouse Silver. Certainly more devious. She just looked like trouble. His mother had warned him about girls like her. _Trouble, _she'd said. _Trouble with a capital 'T.' _But at that moment, in a realization that was both horrifying and thrilling, Ritchie felt a flushed heat rise over his collar. Trouble looked like _fun_.

He was barely listening when she turned that grin on him, along with a wild, one-eyed leer. "We could do anything we wanted."

A stupid smile came to his face, and he chuckled deliriously before he could muscle it back down. "Anything," he said, breathlessly. He never really thought about girls...

Well, that wasn't exactly true. A small part of him, at least, had been thinking about girls all the time for the past few years. There'd just never been much in the way of practical thinking, because he rarely traveled with anyone but Silver, and seemed to hardly even bump into any girls near his age that weren't either trainers heading in a different direction from his own, or didn't carry out some sort of functional role that made them inaccessible. He bumped into Jennies all the time, and he'd even had a strange dream once where Joy'd come up to his room and given him some sort of weird physical examination, but there was nothing ever practical or even possible about them. But Uranium was right here, and she was actually kindof cool, and close _enough _to his age, and unlike most of the other trainers he'd met over the years, actually had time to hang out with him._  
_  
"Let's go get Inked!" She screeched, literally chomping the air, as she snatched him by the elbow, and dragged him along behind her with long strides that seemed not at all nervous or troubled by the idea of being stabbed thousands of times with a needle.

The flushed feeling left Ritchie, then. He did not at all like the idea of "getting inked."

Regardless, it wasn't long after that they found themselves standing in a tattoo parlor, which was a surprisingly well lit and clean looking place, in spite of Ritchie's first impression of the tinted window and hand-painted veneer on the outside of the place, which did put him more at ease (which was to say that he was now incredibly apprehensive as opposed to petrified with fear) but slowly, surely, she won him over to the idea. Even he couldn't have said how. Maybe with was just the momentum of things, but soon he was pointing at art on the walls, or in the example booklets strewn about the foyer, right along with her.

"Oh, man, check out that one of the Rayquaza! That's awesome!"

"Yeah. But you can't get that one, Ritchie," she told him, with a laugh.

When he asked her why, she snorted. "One, because you're too girly for a tattoo that big."

Ritchie rolled his eyes, and clenched down extra-hard on the booklet he was holding, to avoid fumbling nervously with it. "I'm not afraid," he lied.

"Two, _I'm _getting that one," she decided.  
_  
_She stunned him again when she pulled off her hoodie. He realized now why she'd never taken it off in front of them before, even on the days where it'd gotten crazy hot during camp. The feminine aspect of Uranium was nothing that would impress anyone, truthfully. The tightness of her shirt and the slightly damp cling of body perspiration made it starkly clear that she wasn't wearing a bra, but she was just barely more endowed than he was, if that was worth anything. His eyes were pulled elsewhere, though.

This would not be her first tattoo, that much was certain. When she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt, her entire right arm was a wash of color and sharp, curling black lines that wove together like a quilted tapestry. A gold and yellow Ho-oh, done in profile, spread it's burning pinions over her shoulder, and the finned, crimson crest of a Groudon with fierce eyes stretched down her upper arm to just where her t-shirt would've covered. Beneath that, an Onix amidst a cascade of boulders wrapped twice around her elbow, and gave way to a Gyarados hedged by stylized tsunami-waves that went likewise to the middle of her forearm. "Cool, huh?"

Ritchie popped his eyebrows. He really wasn't sure if that was the word he would've used. He wasn't sure what word he would've used, but _Cool _probably wasn't it. _Intense_, was the first word that came to mind. _Drastic_, maybe. When she'd said tattoo, he'd assumed she meant like, one of those cute little flowers or kanjii that meant "Beauty" or something. Tattoos how girls liked to get, tucked away on their midriff or ankle. Uranium's tattoos looked like they belonged on a yakuza boss, or a leathered-out biker.

"What made you wanna get all those done?" he asked.

Uranium shrugged. "I dunno. I just sortof gathered them up along the way. I usually get one when something special happens. So I can remember it," She lifted up her shirt a ways, and pushed down her belt just a bit, leveling a fingernail painted with chipped blue polish at yet another tattoo just below her hip of an olive-colored egg, that was cracked and had busted open at the top, spilling out rays of what looked like sunlight, starting off as white and gradually working through orange and purples as it spread across towards her navel. "It all started with this one. I got it the day after my first Pokemon hatched," She hiked up her shirt a little further, revealing many, many more. An ultra-ball and a great-ball colliding in what looked like an explosion, a feathered leaf of a Meganium. A Dragonair and a Milotic twisted around another, wreathed in pink bubbles and purple flames, and so many others that it was hard to pick out individual ones. "From there, it just kinda blew up. But that's how my life, is, ya know? A lot's happened since then."

"You know, most people just take a picture when they wanna remember something," Ritchie said sheepishly.

"I'm not like most people." she said with a frown. "Anyways, what are you gonna get?"

"I dunno. Maybe a star."

"A star?" Uranium made a face.

"Yeah, I like stars," he showed her one of his poke balls. All six of them were emblazoned with yellow stars. It had sortof started off as something he did to set his own poke balls apart, because it was easy to draw a star, and most people's poke balls looked plain and normal. It'd even come in handy once or twice. Now it was just a habit. He even drew a little star at the end of his signature when he signed up for tournaments or checked into a Pokemon center for the night. It wasn't as flashy as her ideas, maybe, but it was all he could think of that had real personal significance to him.

"Well, you can get a star if you want. I'm gettin' a bad-ass Rayquaza!"  
_  
_Uranium stepped up to the counter and made all the arrangements, and after a few moments of discussion, forked over her passport. The artist looked at it with some scrutiny. "Technically, I have to accept this," he said grudgingly. "What about your friend, is he eighteen?"

He made a noise that he hoped was affirmative._  
_  
"-Yes." Uranium said, cutting across him with a confidence that he was sure his face alone resolutely denied. He wasn't even going to be sixteen for another two months. Eighteen-year-olds had beards and stuff, didn't they? Uranium might've been able to pass for an adult. He was pretty sure she was actually only seventeen, but if the tattoos she already had didn't convince the guy, Ritchie didn't know what would.

He thought, during the long moment of disapproving suspicion that they were about to be denied, and probably thrown out, but then the guy jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and toward the back room.

They were sat in seats that more resembled something he might've expected to find in a dentist's office than in a tattoo parlor, each set into a little niche, in rows of three. They were catty-corner to one another, so that Ritchie could see her if he craned his neck around a little. She gave him a thumbs up, and then reclined out of sight, and that was the last he saw of her for a good long while. Another tattooist came into the cubicle with him then, and took a seat at a stool beside his own. He was a portly guy in his late twenties, with a great big goatee. He was friendly enough though, and didn't pull a face when Ritchie timidly told him what he wanted.

"Just a little star, or something." He pointed at his shoulder. "Here."

"A star, huh? Is this your first tattoo?"

He wondered why he was such a dead ringer for a novice at this. He didn't bother lying, though. "Yes."

"Well, let me hip you to something: You gotta go big if you wanna impress the ladies."

"Big like, how?" Ritchie stammered, feeling like an idiot. "N-Not too big."

The tattooist rolled his shoulders around like he was mulling a thought. "Alright, flashy, then."

"Okay." Ritchie said, but then faltered. "Well, not _too _flashy."

"Ah. Business Casual. Got it."Ritchie nodded, his face a little green.

Just like he'd expected, getting a tattoo sucked, even though it turned out not to be so much pain when he got right down to it. It just stung, and wherever the buzzing needle went, it kept on stinging. He'd heard people say that you kinda went numb after a while, but he imagined they were confusing numb with _sore_. That, and there was a lot more blood than he thought there would be. When it was halfway over, he felt like he'd rather they just cut it into him with a pen-knife. Then the guy told him he hadn't even gotten to the color part yet.

He must've looked pretty rough, because eventually the guy said, "C'mon, talk to me buddy." Like Ritchie had suffered a grievous wound, and was going to slip away if he didn't stay lucid. "I see you got poke balls on your belt. You a trainer?"

"Yeah." Ritchie said, labored.

"That's cool. You won anything big?" the guy wondered aloud, not looking away from Ritchie's arm.

"I was runner up in the Silver Conference this year."

"Oh, sweet. That's awesome," the tattooist gushed, but Ritchie figured that it was probably just to make him feel better. "So what about your girlfriend, over there? She train Pokemon too?"

Ritchie pulled at his collard, feeling suddenly uncomfortable for reasons other than be perforated. "She's not really, uh..."

"Oh, I gotcha. Tryna make a move, then?"

Ritchie grimaced. The guy wasn't being especially loud, but he was sure Uranium could hear him. She wasn't that far away. "I, uh..." he sortof rolled his head around, and settled on something that was halfway between a shrug and a nod. He felt his face light up like a stoplight when he did it, though, and he abruptly sucked in his bottom lip, and stared out ahead at the wall, feeling like shrinking away to nothing. "I don't think she's really into me," he whispered. He considered for a moment, quite irrationally, that even if she was into him, there was every chance that she would just imagine Lance's head on his body when she told him so. The tangential thought drew an airy chuckle.

"Well, you know, they say the best way to get someone to like you is to go out and commit a small crime together."

That got his attention. "Crime? Wha?" He was baffled. "I don't think I could do that."

"Right, coz you're _totally _eighteen."

He shut his mouth again, humbled by that, blush returning. The minutes carried along in a buzz after that, and it wasn't too much longer before the tattooist started swabbing down his arm. "Awright. I think you can take a look, now. Tell me if you like it."

There was a pattern of eighteen small stars on his arm, seventeen of which were arranged in a circle around a larger central star. Each of the small stars was a different color, signifying an elemental type; red for fire, gray for steel, violet for poison, white for normal, and so on. The central star was colorless, and had a poke ball symbol in the middle of it. All in all it was only about three inches wide. "Thats cool..." Ritchie griped, "But did you have to highlight it all in pink, like that?"

The guy laughed. "That's just the swelling. That'll go away."

"Good." Ritchie said. "I like it, then."

The tattooist nodded. "Right on."_  
_  
Uranium must've heard that he was finished, because she barged over to take a look at it.

Ritchie turned scarlet. She had her shirt up over her shoulders, evidently so that the tattooist doing her Rayquaza could get at her back, and though it was bunched over her chest, it left almost all of her visible, and caught him so off guard that he couldn't even respond when she tutted at the tiny little tattoo. "Cute," she mocked. "Check mine out, though. He's just got the line-work done yet, but-"

She turned, so that he could see the sky-high Pokemon twisting its way across her side then up and around to the back of her neck, it's mouth parted slightly in a toothsome hiss. "Pretty fuckin' awesome, right?"

It was hard to disagree with her. He felt like there was glue in his mouth, though, so he just nodded.

She cocked her head at him. "What, did it hurt?"

Ritchie shook his head, trying to look cool and casual as he could manage.

She frowned. "You know it's not really a tattoo unless it hurts, right? That's what makes it a tattoo."

He frowned back, skeptical, but she only blinked at him. "Ask him, if you don't believe me," she said, pointing at the tattooist.

He turned to do just that, but then she slapped him sharply on his shoulder and when he screamed like she'd peeled skin off him, she dashed off back to her niche, laughing.

It ended up being several more hours before hers was done, as hers required much more detail and color-work than his had, aside from being much larger. She finally emerged back into the lobby, and he handed her a drink he'd bought across the street at a convenience store while he'd waited.

He was pretty floored when she broke out a shiny black bank-card to pay, but not as floored as he was when he heard how much they wanted. His tattoo alone had been three hundred bucks. The grand total was just under fifteen hundred pokedollars, but she didn't even break a sweat.

"They're artists," she explained when they walked back out onto the street. "When you're brave enough to indelibly mark on another persons skin, and good enough that they won't be miserable with it for the rest of their lives, you get however much you ask for."

Ritchie guessed it made a lot of sense. He sortof felt like a cheapskate when she put it that way. After he thought about it for a moment, he realized that while it wasn't actually a _thing_, per se, three-hundred smackers made it the single most expensive thing anyone'd ever given him with the exclusion of his trainers license. "Thanks," he said.

She just shrugged at him, grinned that mean-looking grin of hers, though he figured she meant well by it, and asked "Where to now?"

Ritchie huffed. "I'm too sore to do much else. I was thinking we could just call it an afternoon. Play some cards or something." It was late evening now, and twilight had caught the city in a special hour of dimness and sea-haze that made it seem like they were all alone as he led them into the Pokemon Center.

"_You're _sore?" she gave his sleeve a little slap, drawing a flinch. "You're a baby is what you are."

He made a face at her, and the checked them into two rooms.

The evening wound down to them eating junk-food, and making snipes at how bad the other person's deck was, between trips to the bathroom to apply moisturizer, while Sparky snoozed between the pillows.

"Seriously? You have a Fossil set Gengar? That's the oldest card I've ever seen. Did you get that for your first birthday, or something? Where's your First Edition Holographic Charizard, grandpa?" Uranium balked.

"It may be old, but I'm still kickin' your ass with it. That Heatran sure ain't doin' you much good on the _bench_. Oh, and I use Gengar's Pokemon power. Now he's KO'd. Grass-Steel deck?Pfft._ Please_, Psychic-Fighting is where it's _at_."

"Yeah, except," she reached out and tapped a card. "Pokemon Nurse, sucker." She discarded a few energy cards, but Heatran remained in play.

"Supporters are so cheap. The game was so much better before-"

"Yeah, yeah, heard it a million times, grandpa. Back in your day, gas was a nickle a gallon too, I'll bet."

She ended up winning two out of three, proving that she was just as potent a competitor on the field as off it, or that his deck was old and stupid, she was never definitive about which it actually was. He was polishing off the last of a licorice stick, and thinking about how much he'd actually, really enjoyed himself that day when she screwed all that up for him.

They'd been standing out in the hallway, getting ready to go into their separate rooms and hit the hay, when she finally mentioned it, but boy did she mention it. "So, did I hear wrong, earlier or did that guy ask you if you were trying to make a move on me?"

_Yep. Word for word. That's damn near exactly what he asked me. _He couldn't just say that, though, because that would make the next question she was bound to ask a dead certainty. He opened his mouth, hoping that something would come to him. Something that rhymed with 'make a move' that didn't sound completely stupid, but all the further he got was 'Steak' and 'Groove' before she gave him another slap on his shoulder, and he yelped involuntarily.

"What'd you tell him?" she asked in a way that he really didn't like. It was teasing, but not in a way that made him think she wanted an answer for the sake of curiosity. It sounded like she was gearing up to make fun of him for it. She was seventeen, and he was only fifteen. She could guess along the lines of what she'd say. _Does widdle Ritchie have the hots for me? Gonna pop a little boner?_

"I didn't-ouch!"She slapped his arm again. "What'd you tell him, Ritchie?"

"Nothing!" he hissed. "OW! Stop it, that hurts!"

This time she pinched him. "What'd you tell him!"

This time, instead of making a retort, he just reached out and pinched her back, right where he'd remembered seeing her tattoo. Apparently he hit it, because she gasped, though whether it was in surprise or pain, he didn't know. He didn't have time to figure it out, either, because she damn near knocked him out cold when she tackled him back into the confines of the room they'd left, and his head clunked against the heavy door-jamb. He recovered quickly, though, and there was all manner of flipping and rolling and disorienting turns, but Uranium proved to be twice and again the scrapper he was. He thought he'd gotten her good and pinned down once using superior weight and strength by putting his forearm across her collar, and holding her legs down under his knees while he clutched the wrist of her primary hand and held it to the floor, but then she'd jammed her thumb super-hard into his armpit, and the limb he'd been holding her down with turned into a noodle. She flipped him off, and spun around into a superior position, smothering his nose and mouth with the palm of her hand so that he couldn't catch his breath and redouble his efforts, and barricading herself into the abbreviated entry-way by pressing her feet against the wall, so that he could not toss her off or push her away.

"You fight like a girl!" she said with a laugh, and gave his nose a painful tweak.

"Sparky!" Ritchie howled, only it came out as a muffled cry of _"Bargy," _instead, as she clamped his nostrils shut. His Raichu didn't come to his rescue, though, and was likely across the hall, still, snoring.

"Oh, _go ahead_, call your Pokemon into it. I'll just let out my Haxorus, here," she reached threateningly towards her waist. The movement displaced her balance an gave him an opening, so he took it. Twisting sideways, he reached over her back, and did his best impression of Crasher Wake. Utilizing everything he'd absorbed in the many years he'd watched the wrestler on the Pokemon Variety Hour (he always stuck around to watch it in the mornings if the center he happened to be staying at had a television in the lobby) he got his legs underneath himself again and hauled her up into the air like a sack of flour, before dropping her in a heap. He'd meant for it to be onto the bed, so as not to cause any real damage, but he'd overestimated his own burst of strength and it kindof ended up being half on and half on and half off, so she ended up doing an awkward flip over the opposite end and landing with a loud clunk.

"Uugh..." he heard her groan from somewhere on the floor opposite him. He crawled up onto the bed and across it to see what was the matter, but he realized the foolishness of that mistake as soon as he'd done it.

"Of course," he said aloud, as he turned to meet her crawling up over the same side of the bed he'd come from, having scrambled underneath the bed to flank him. She leapt at him with a battle-cry, and he lunged right back at her, and soon they were standing on the bed, locked in a hand-to-hand grapple, each trying to bend the others fingers back or under to gain leverage. Ritchie was the first to relinquish that pursuit, though, mostly because he was losing it rather badly. Instead, he stepped inside her stance, and hooked the toe of his foot behind her heel and gave her a hard shove.

Evidently, though, she had seen her fair share of the Pokemon Variety Hour, as well, because she just dragged him along with her in a mid-air roll, and they went flying. Her spin was overblown, and she landed flat on her back, but he landed with her knee in his gut, so it seemed fair. Both of them had the wind knocked out of them, and the impromptu wrestling-match came to a halt as both of them tried not to cough in the others face.

"Alright," Uranium whispered hoarsely. He thought she was gonna say "Time in!" and they were gonna be back to scrapping, but instead she said, "You got me where you want me. _Make your move."_

He was so stunned that he almost sat upright, but the sight of her, laying there flushed and panting was something that just lit a fire in him. All her imperfections, her thin lips, her mussy hair, even that huge medical eye-patch all became moot. So he went for it it, heart pounding and lips puckered. Or tried to. But there was something in his way.

As it turned out, it was her ankle, which she'd some how worked up behind his back to hook under his chin. Straightening out her legs, she sent him hurtling backwards off of her.

"Psych!"He landed up against the bureau and upset the lamp, which landed next to him, and promptly gave out. Darkness instantly swallowed the windowless room. He felt Uranium clambering to get ahold of him, but he didn't bother to fight back. Slamming up against the chest of drawers had hurt, but that was nothing compared to blow to his pride. Or the one to his heart.

She just came on unabated, though, getting ahold of his wrists, and working herself back into a dominant position, climbing over-top of him. And then, he realized, she wasn't fighting anymore either. She was just sitting on him, gripping the back of his hands.

"You missed, before," she hissed into his ear, suddenly very close.

"When?" he asked, apathetically. "You mean in the hallway?" He offered, deflectingly, hoping against hope that he could play off having actually tried to kiss her. He'd also tried to pinch her her tattoo when she pinched his._  
_  
"Yeah," she said, and Ritchie could feel her breath in his ear. "Here, I'll show you."

Slowly. Very slowly. _Painfully _slowly. She guided his hand under the hem of her shirt, and across her skin._  
_  
He realized all this time that he'd been expecting her tattoos to be somehow different from the rest of her skin, to at least _feel _like they were different. Plastic, maybe. He didn't know why he'd expected that, but he found himself surprised as his hand was worked across her middle. He knew there were tattoos there, but all he could feel was warm skin, slightly dampened with their workout-even the fine little hairs normal bodies had. In the darkness the only thing he could feel was the soft ripple to suggest the border of swelling left behind by the Rayquaza. It felt like a huge, jagged 'S' buried just under her skin.

"Was that what you were aiming for?"

It was a little further back than what he'd gotten ahold of. He thought about giving it a pinch, just like he'd planned, as some small measure of revenge for the cruel prank she'd pulled, but he didn't. He was so thankful-impossibly, giddily thankful-that he hadn't, when she guided his hand away from her back, and to the front.

"Or was it _this_?" she rasped, as his fingertips brushed against her nipple. Two spheres of cold metal to either side of it told him there was a barbell pierced through it.

"Pinch me there," she demanded.

So he did. _Hard. _And the sound she made...

It was not so much a gasp or a moan as a sound that got caught in her throat as it came up, and quivered there-yes, he realized, he could hear it, literally quaking in her vocal-chords-only echoing out of her mouth as a shadow of itself. A whimper, almost, except her mouth was wide open. Whatever it was she had meant to say, or whatever sound she would've made, he was holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he realized, and she_ liked it!_

Then, all that was a lost concept to him. Her hands were in _his _shirt, and her sounds weren't hitting the open air anymore, but the back of his throat as her tongue pushed against his, but somewhere in his head a tiny voice reminded him, "_Trouble! Trouble, Ritchie!"_

But he ignored the hell out of that voice. And he kept ignoring it and kept ignoring it, until he was saying things like "I'm not really sure how to do this," and "I've never actually been with a girl."

Then he was. Then he had. And it was amazing like nothing really ever had been before.

But then it was over, and the whole world came creeping back in.

Slowly at first, just minor annoyances. His tattoo started to sting again, and the heat of Uranium when she flopped down next to him started to be very uncomfortable, however enjoyable it'd been before. Then, the big things came. First the embarrassment, then the apprehension. The urge to redress himself, and hide his body, the sudden fear of being caught in here by nurse Joy, however unlikely that might've been. Then, ugliest of all, the full blown shame and guilt. All the infinite problems and complications and all their recurrent implications that could result from what he'd just done played themselves out in his head. His career crashing and burning didn't even compare to some of the shit that he pondered there for the next several minutes.

He brought his hands up and rubbed his face, trying to collect himself, but it was no use, so he tried to reach out for Uranium, to grab on to something, and collect some measure of strength from her. If she could just say something snarky like she usually did, then at least he would know that _she _was going to be fine with it. As it was, she let him hold onto her arm for a few minutes, but said nothing. Then, abruptly, she shook him off.

"C'n you go now? M' tired. W'nna sleep," she murmured into her pillow.

So he did leave, feeling more awful than angry, and more defenseless than dispossessed. He dressed himself before he stepped outside, then crept quietly across the hall and into his own room. He tried to get into bed and close his eyes, but he was up until dawn, his heart thudding against his ribs, before sleep finally overwhelmed him. It wasn't until well into the afternoon that he awoke, his shoulder itching fiercely. He still felt pretty awful, but not nearly so much as before, so he got up to go talk to Uranium. If he could look her straight in the face, he felt like, maybe this would just all evaporate. Or at least, he'd feel sturdy enough to deal with it._  
__  
_But she wasn't even there. There was just an empty spot on her bed where here backpack should've been. She'd righted the lamp before she'd left and when he looked, he found a folded note torn from a composition notebook tucked underneath it. The back half was math-notes on some Pokemon move related formula, but the front had a few lines written in blue ink.

"Ritchie,

Needed to get back to School. Finals, remember?

Anyways, Thanks. And also, Sorry.

-U235"

* * *

**A/N:** This document was so big before I split it that it killed my LibreOffice. Like, literally. It's dead now, so who knows what kindof editing madness this chapter is going to turn out to be. (Uploader really mangled some of the paragraphs, especially in Ritchie and Uranium's part. Hopefully they're mostly fixed now.)

_Okay really, more OCs, Dynasty? Seriously?_

K is not an OC. Canon character. I promise. Just wait.

Surge's little talk sortof came from something I half-remembered from Pokemon blue. I don't think it was in Vermillion, though, but somewhere theres just a little Machoke sprite runnin' around, layin' down the foundation to a house with some construction worker dude and even when I was like, eight, I went: "Man, this guy has it figured out. I'd get my Pokemon to build hella shit." The idea evolved a little, but I suppose there's that.

That next chapter should come along relatively quick. I know I say that all the time, and I always mean it, but... well, shit. Anyways, thanks for reading and everything. I appreciate it.


	17. Chapter XVII

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokémon.

**Chapter Summary: **When the league comes together, there will be more on the table than just the suspected attack. As Charles issues reforms, will Cynthia make the cut? Ash contemplates his skill with Assistive Training, the nature of right and wrong, and-a romantic proposition?! And what in the world became of Anabel?

**A/N: **Just call me the Flash, yo. No significant warnings this chapter! See, I can be nice!

**EDIT:** I've added a Preface to the fic. You can find it in Chapter I. Should cover all the Ps and Qs, so I don't have to do it on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XVII**

"Secrets"

"Wait, Aura?" she'd interrupted him, as he stood there, trying to explain to her what his master had meant for him to. She had become too confused to remain silent, though she had taken pains to remain as quiet and demure as could be, just as she always did.

"Yes, Aura," Riley had confirmed, with perhaps too much enthusiasm, in hindsight. "It is almost certainly Aura that allows you..." He had paused then, obviously thinking for a moment about how best to describe the abilities his master had told him she possessed. "Your rare gift, that only a handful of people can ever hope to know."

Riley had not been greatly pleased when her frowned deepened. "If you belong to such a group, what do you need me for? Doesn't Aura show you the feelings of others, as well?" Anabel had asked, her fingers steepled before her, on the padded leather desk. The question confounded him, and likely still did.

The two of them had spent the next several moments in silence. Clearly not knowing how to convince someone of his convictions, he had floundered. To him, she supposed, it should've been plain. If you had the gift, the logical thing to do—the _**right **_thing to do—was to join the Guardians.

"Not implicitly, no. Not in the same way as you. I can sense strong emotion, but I am not able to see so readily into a person, as you. I can usually see what Lucario sees and I feel what he feels..." He had paused to look at his friend and companion, sharing a brief smile. "But there is a deeper connection there. The feelings of others not known to me are much more difficult to discern. I doubt that I'd have been considered well in tune to matters of the heart, even before I became a guardian and discovered my gift, so it stands to reason that I am not presently, either." Riley replied, though he had obviously been beginning to doubt he actually needed to say so, based simply on the look Anabel had been giving him. All of this was unimportant, though, compared to what he needed to explain to her, he'd said. Still, he had let her continue her line of questioning.

"What does your gift allow you, then, if not that?" She remembered asking, curling the corner of her lips downward, under the strong impression that this was not the meeting of like-minded individuals she'd thought it to be at the time. Riley put out unusual emotions, like smoke on the wind. Whether they were foreboding, like the fires of war, or welcoming like those of the hearth she had not yet known, and though now she was less uncertain, the question was still on her mind. On top of all that, there had been the sharp spike of fear in him, something she did not take lightly. What was Riley so afraid of?

Riley had betrayed a frown when he heard her question. He frowned deeply, almost upset by it, before his face resumed normality. Aura Guardians did not flaunt their abilities, that look had told her, and she could tell right away that Riley certainly would not do so just to prove a point. To her, he hadn't seemed smug at all when he did say with as much conviction and honesty as he could manage: "Something else."

Anabel had regarded him for quite a long time, once he'd said that. He'd later admitted that his master had warned him not to lie to, or attempt to hide anything from Anabel, and that he'd seen then that though her lilac eyes were not baleful, he could tell that her gaze pierced sharply, and much deeper than the azure lights of his own eyes could ever penetrate.

To her own inspection, she appeared innocent enough. Just a girl, though she took steps to appear more elegant and regal than most—but in a way, she supposed there was a real possibility that she was also more frightening than anything Riley had ever seen. What was more frightening, truly, than someone or something that could know your deepest thoughts, perhaps better than you yourself did?

She looked at him now, wondering if his opinion had changed any.

Riley was sitting with his back to the wall, facing the automatic doors, scanning the whole room with his eyes but not moving his head. He was deliberate, and also calm—but not relaxed. He said nothing to Anabel when he met her eyes, but he did smile. It was a poor attempt though, and he knew it as well as she did. Riley, the Aura Guardian, a man of nigh-unshakable faith, still found himself feeling conflicted at times, but seldom more so than now. He was on the run, and he could not be sure how many steps ahead of pursuit he was. He'd imagined himself doing quite a lot in service to the Guardians, but never kidnapping.

She'd asked him then, standing there in her lushly appointed office. Or maybe she had not actually asked him. He wasn't certain now. Those lilac eyes, so barely purple that they flirted with gray, so pale and placid, like circular chips of flecked granite. Those had been what had truly beckoned an answer out of him, even before it hit her lips, if it actually had. "Why are you afraid of me? I haven't done you any harm."

And more than just beckoning that answer, he realized, they had been seeking it, and not from his words. From his heart. Terror had clinched him for a moment, but then he realized that if his master thought she had the ability to be a guardian—and his master was hardly ever wrong—he had nothing to fear from her; his unshakable faith in action. He was as true a guardian as any, he knew. He'd had nothing incriminating inside him for her to see. Straightening, he'd answered, with just a hint of pride—pride which he now chastised himself for—"I am only afraid to fail."

In his slow scan of the room, he allowed his gaze to shift back at her, wondering if what she'd seen then had exposed that pride for some hidden vanity even he was not aware of, having repressed it from memory.

She hadn't, though. She remembered feeling her lips crack into a smile as he'd opened before her like a book, then, the pages of his soul laid bare. It had been a guilty smile, she knew, for there was nothing she enjoyed more than a kindly heart, and she had seen that his was one, once he'd finally unarmored it. Riley rarely gave what a person might consider a true smile and never overly grinned, she could see. Hardly ever had his teeth bared to show his pleasure—and even less to show his displeasure, truthfully—but he did smile with his eyes. The corners of them creased, and his brows rose when he was happy and she had seen the evidence of that happening often, in his unguarded expression. Half a decade of diligence, hard work and self-restraint shackled all his features, but not his eyes. The eyes were where a man's heart shone through, and the heart was a very difficult thing to shackle.

Riley was a faithful man, with an untarnished conscience. He was a stalwart defender, and a chivalrous, oft times selfless servant. But Riley, sadly, was friend to few and of few, she'd learned in that moment of inspection. His first and often only love was duty. That much was written plainly on him, even now. She had seen plainly in him an amiability, but she wondered if it wouldn't perish in the face of his obligations, if pushed too far. Riley was first for the guardians, and second for all else. Still, she'd thought, that did make him markedly better than most men, who were often first for their ideals, and second for themselves—or else the reverse of that—with all else being a distant third.

He hadn't been lying though. There had been a fear in him and it was deeply rooted in his misgivings about a recent failure he had known. The first such, she could tell. Riley was not a man accustomed to disappointment and that too was written in his eyes. Not often had they been sodden with tears—perhaps never—which was ever rarer in a benevolent person. But there had still been a fear there, and it was of her. She couldn't say what it was, even staring so deeply into him. She had needed to touch him to find that out.

She had raised herself from her seat, and stepped slowly from behind the large oaken desk of her library, to come before him, tentatively raising a hand, her request unspoken. Riley, who had clearly been told to expect this from the unsurprised but tense look on his face, had complied and made no move to stop her.

She'd laid her hand, tips first onto his wide chest, before pushing. Her fingers had expanded outward, splaying into the fabric of his jerkin, until the cup of her palm flattened against his sternum. She had no longer needed his eyes to tell her anything then, and so she closed her own and inclined her head in concentration.

A hundred million things had all been there to see, and she had long ago learned to disallow them entry all at once. The heart was a confusing place, where wanton desire rampaged constantly against the purest longings. Voracious appetites of the heart were often secret, guarded things, but they could not be hidden from what already had eyes within you. The heart did things independently of its owner, oft as not. Covet whence it should not covet. Hate, where it would best entreat. Lust, after whom it would rather ignore. Blackness resided here, even when it was not premeditated. Riley needn't have feared her probing, though. She'd held no lofty idyllic standard against him.

She'd only ever met a single soul without venom somewhere in his heart, and she did not ever expect to meet another.

Riley had been everything she could've expected and perhaps more, but in good conscience she looked for what she'd wanted, and left the rest unregarded. She would find the answer and share not a bit of the rest. A person was entitled to that much. A man's heart was his last fortress and it would not withstand much in the way of insurgency within it.

Riley had been afraid but not of her. It was _for_her. He had known something, or at least the shadow of something that she did not. About the tower. About her complex. She had seen fires. Columns of flame five hundred feet high, burning under blackened sky, all the stars and moon swallowed by its choking pall. A cruel, twisted shadow and a gleaming claw, brandished with malice. The last image had been so disturbing, that she had gasped, and pulled her hand away.

Riley, who seemed to catch on, when she had looked up at him, nodded gravely. "My master has sent me to see you away from here. When you're safe, you can decide whether or not you will listen to what I've said about the guardians need of you, but what's important is that you're away."

"I-I have to tell Scott!" she'd said, alarmed at once, as she strode back to her desk, and swept aside a stack of papers to reach her telephone. The tower represented a huge financial investment, and any damage to it would surely be a huge detriment to her employer. She was her own trainer, first and foremost, and one of an illustrious group, but the Battle Tower was hers only in name.

"It will not matter. The strike will come whether he is warned or unwarned," she remembered Riley cautioning, matching her stride for stride. He had put his hand over the receiver, as she went to lift it from the cradle. "He will not understand as you do, that the Guardians had nothing to do with this. If you lift this phone, you damn me and mine. I beg you not to do that."

Anabel had let her hand hover for a moment in the air, unsure of what to do with it. "I...I'll have to explain eventually! W-what's going to happen? What will I tell him?"

"I do not know. But the lie you tell him will taste better, if it is not salted with an opposite truth he has already heard." Riley had advised. "We'll both be better served if you collect your things and your Pokémon, and leave with me. Explain later. Explain it however you like, but please, come with me."

And so, here they were, sitting in a Pokémon Center near Viridian City, hours removed, and listening to the story break on cable news. The tower was gone. Her old life hanging in an uncertain stasis, where on one hand, they would be discovered by the perpetrators—who's real intention and affiliation was still not known, said the reporter—or on the other, Scott would, and like as not, Riley, savior though he was, would be dragged off to prison, no matter what she said. She could disappear, fade from public knowledge and become a Guardian, which Riley seemed to believe was not only possible, but was undoubtedly his favored course.

He'd said he wouldn't force her hand, but it wasn't as though he'd left many options open to her.

"We should head south," Riley said quietly. "There's a safe-house in Pallet town where we can hold up for a while, until things get easier."

"We aren't safe here?"

"From trouble. Not from scrutiny." His tone made it rather clear that was something neither of them wanted, and she was not apt to disagree.

Riley had taken off his wide-brimmed hat and his traveling cloak, but that'd hardly helped. His attire was still hopelessly dated, and her own clothing, puff sleeves and bordering of golden lace did not make her any less auspicious to the eye.

"South, then," she answered, though she wasn't sure what 'safe-house' actually entailed. She knew she could trust Riley, and that would just have to do, for now.

She proved not to be much of a hiker on their foot-bound trek from Tojou Falls, as it turned out. The hard-heeled sole of her clogs was painful to walk in, and by now she knew well enough to simply go barefoot. She waited until they made it to city limits, then slipped out of shoes, stripped off the thin silk stockings, and tucked one into the other before stuffing them down the toe of one clog. She rolled her pant-legs up, and then stood straight again, to nod her accord with Riley.

Riley, who had taken the moment to consult a ragged-looking canvas map, and an old brass compass, tucked them back into his jerkin, and smiled. "Ready?" he asked.

"Ready."

They started, and didn't stop until they made it into Pallet late that afternoon. Their trek brought them the length of Route 1, nearly twenty-five miles of searing hot asphalt, which she had thought that she would been glad to be rid of, until they came to the rough-shod gravel and hard-packed dirt roads of Pallet Town.

Though Anabel had never been the outdoorsy type, she had never much minded getting a little dirty now and then. Still, she found herself looking scornfully at her feet, which were now just about black with dust and so sore that they were just about all that occupied her mind. It was therefore a bit jarring when Riley finally ground to a halt and declared plainly. "Here we are."

She could've just collapsed. She certainly felt like it. Instead she just sucked in a gust of air and stood on her toes for a moment to stretch the wasted tendons in the arches, before following his stare towards a two-story building that stood over the rest of the town on a hill. She assumed it to be a house belonging to the town mayor, or something, but when Riley gave a slow knock on the door, a boy just a bit younger than her opened it.

"What can I do for you?" He asked, looking both of them up and down with what she could only assume was suspicion. Not that she'd have felt differently. Riley was wearing what looked like a poet blouse under his jerkin while she looked like she'd just got done mixing tar in her Sunday best, and both of them looked very obviously like what they were; out of place, out of energy, and on the run.

Riley gave a polite bow, an act that Anabel thought did little to help them seem like they belonged, and introduced himself. "I am Riley of Rota," he gestured, indicating himself and then her, in turn. "This is the Salon Maiden, Anabel."

Anabel blushed. Not knowing what to do, she gave a reluctant curtsy of her own so as not to seem incongruous to their appearance.

The young boy didn't seem impressed. "I'm Gary."

"I was hoping to speak to Mr. Oak, if that were to be possible."

"You're speaking to him now." Gary said without batting an eyelash. His look became more bemused than suspicious for a moment.

Unintentionally, she picked up on much from Gary. Without it really being her intention at all, she looked into his dark eyes and saw the glimmer there. The guy had an enormous ego, and that was not hard at all to see, but there seemed to be two opposed forces holding it in check. One was simple grace; a learned trait, she realized—he had a face made for smirking, and his eyes showed it. The expression of a man who had won so frequently that he no longer saw the need to rub it in anyone's face, rather than the expression of one who'd simply realized he was made of the same stuff as everyone else. The other, it was harder to say. If it was humility, he hid it well. Maybe...regret? No, that didn't seem right either.

Riley made a noise, and when Gary raised an eyebrow, he stifled a chuckle. "Well, ah...You were a deal older when I spoke to you last."

The look that came next, said it all to her, and she instantly felt bad for seeing it. The look of pitifully concealed inadequacy was as obvious as a shout. She looked away.

"You mean _Professor_Oak," Gary drawled.

"My apologies," Riley muttered, and nodded.

"Wait here, please," Gary said, and stepped back through the threshold. He closed the door behind himself and didn't invite them inside, but he didn't lock it, and she supposed they should be thankful for at least that much trust. The night was so quiet she could hear him give a shout even behind the door.

"Grandpa! Grandpa-a-a-a!"

There was a long silence.

"Tracey, where is grandpa?"

A muffled response came then, too far away to be heard.

"Because there are two weirdoes out here who want to talk to him!" Gary yelled back impatiently.

There was the sound of tromping feet, like someone coming down a stairwell and another few moments of long, embarrassing silence, and the door swung back open. A gray-haired man of straight build, middling height, and square feature stood there. Anyone could've recognized the man, and then she understood very acutely the reason behind Gary's deprecated look.

This was Professor Samuel Oak, the man who'd essentially given birth to the field of Pokémon Behavioral Science, and made several of what were still considered leading contributions to science in general. That was a dark, dark shadow to stand in, indeed.

The man himself stole away her sudden guilt with his kindliness, though, as he swept forward to shake Riley's hand, and then her own, clasping hers gently in both palms. The moment she touched him, she saw what a gentle person he was, within, and her pity for Gary lessened even further, though it did not vanish. Samuel Oak was a good-spirited and wise man, and not just because he was getting on in years. At what had to be encroaching sixty, his bronzy eyes were still as heated by his passion for the research he did as they likely had been forty years hence, and there were the wrinkles of many, many easy smiles around the corners of his eyes. "It's been a long time, Riley, how are things?"

"Not great, as of now, but I do have some good news at least." Riley nodded at his charge, then. "I assume you know who that is."

"I certainly do." Professor Oak said with another warming smile, still holding her hand between two callused palms. For some reason, she had no doubt as to the sincerity of that. She didn't consider herself high-profile, or anything, and she had never met the Professor face to face—hadn't even known he lived here—but he seemed like a man who kept track of things. Besides, he seemed to know who Riley was, and she couldn't imagine a more unknown person than Riley.

She'd asked to borrow his poke gear on the road to make a phone-call. He'd asked her if that was anything like a Pokedex and that he didn't have one, if that was the case. She hadn't pushed it any further than that. She got the feeling Riley probably still used Pidgey to carry his messages.

"We are on hard times Professor," Riley admitted, lending some weight to the word 'we', so that he would know that Riley meant the Guardians. "I wouldn't even be in Kanto right now, but for an emergency."

Truthfully, Riley had been on his way to Hoenn, to look into a few PLF-related suspicions he had, when his master had recalled him to Rota suddenly, and sent him out with orders to rescue and recruit Anabel, if possible.

His master had never been specific, but apparently some of the other Aura Guardians, had come under attack within the last few days. From the tone it had been clear to Riley that some of them may have been killed. He'd taken to the new task with alacrity.

Oak nodded. "To be sure."

"I do not wish to be an inconvenience, but I was hoping that you might have a place for us to spend the night. I can arrange for travel by sea around the peninsula, back to Rota, but it may take a day or two to make the arrangements."

The way Oak frowned at first, Anabel thought that he was going to refuse, but it just turned out that he was working out the logistics of it. "I'm not sure there's any place to sleep here that isn't already full up. We've already got two researchers and myself, and that's already a bit past capacity. I ought to be able to set you up with something in town. A family friend."

"Anything under a roof," Riley acknowledged gratefully. Anabel thought she might've also liked a place to bathe, but she wasn't going to look a gift Ponyta in the mouth.

"Please, come inside for a moment, while I make a phone call," The professor said, beckoning them into the building, which turned out to be a small research center. Large machinery and shelves of field manuals were conspicuous throughout. Two desks were set face to face in the center of the floor, and a third overlooked from overhead, just above a set of stairs that opened into a loft. It was a charming, functional little space, Anabel thought, but even if all the doors she counted led to bedrooms, which she was sure they didn't, it was already too crowded to house them as well.

"Aw, gramps, what are ya doin'?" Gary complained, voice muted as he turned his back to them, and rounded on the professor as he made his way to the phone. The professor didn't seem to pay him any mind though. When he'd dialed out and responded to the answer on the opposite end with "hello, Deliah? I know it's late, but I have a favor to ask," Gary stopped trying to be polite. "Hey, are you going senile, gramps? You can't just unload these two renaissance-fair rejects on Ash's mom! Who in the heck are they, anyways!?"

He said it in a way that made her think he assumed they would try and steal all her valuables and make off in the night. She looked down at herself again, and decided that it wasn't far off the mark of what they looked like. It was times like these she wished other people had her gift. She wasn't sure she'd ever been taken for a trouble-maker before, let alone a burglar, and it did hurt her feelings a little bit, but what could she really say? Appearance was everything to most people.

Riley didn't blink at the unspoken accusation, even though she felt herself bristling. Tracey cleared his throat, and Samuel merely put his hand over the receiver and frowned at his grandson. Deliah was the one to break the silence, when her face appeared on the overhead view-screen, looking down on the lot of them as bright as brass. "Well, aren't we all looking tense?"

Everybody seemed to soften then, like she had, without ever actually saying anything, made it all copasetic. Gary withdrew his opposition, which had apparently been more defensive than anything, Tracey let go of his shoulder, and Samuel turned back to the vid-phone without comment. Riley remained stoic, but she felt herself left out a breath.

The arrangements were made, Deliah seemed overjoyed to have them for as long as they required—she rarely had house-guests she said, and was often lonely by herself—and the two of them were off with very little else said.

When they were gone, the professor turned to his grandson with a harrumph. "That was very rude of you."

Gary, having resumed his note-taking, only waved off the chastisement. "You don't think you're maybe a little too trusting?"

Tracey decided to stay out of it. Gary had gained a new sensitivity for having to take anyone at their word, he'd noticed, since his return from Sayda Island. Maybe having your research pulled out from under you did that to a person. The watcher expected Gary's granddad to lay into him, but instead he merely offered up an even explanation. "I don't suppose there's any reason not to tell you:" The Professor assumed his characteristic stance, elbow in palm, thumb to chin, and looked pensive.

"I met Riley several months ago, on one of my most recent fielding surveys. We were looking into a rumor that several large companies illegally release test-Pokémon without rehabilitation, into the ranges north of Mt. Moon. I wandered away from Tracey when I was distracted into following a reformed skein of Murkrow on their migratory flight-path through the valley, when I stumbled—quite unawares, I must say, my fielding skills are not what they once were... Foolish thing to do, really, wander away from camp alone in the wilderness, but that can't be helped now...I remember a time when I was younger-"

"Grandpa," Gary prompted. "You're rambling."

"Oh, uh, yes, where was I..." The professor grunted in recollection. "Oh, I had wandered into the territory of a bull Walrein. It quite obviously didn't belong there, and was reasonably upset by that. The pond they had abandoned it in was little more than a puddle, and the Walrein just couldn't tolerate me blundering into what little territory it could actually claim, so naturally, the poor thing tried to tear me apart."

Tracey thought that only a man like the Professor could say a thing like that and mean it.

"And then—flash! Out of nowhere, that man and his Lucario appear, and fend away this charging Walrein. They didn't hurt it, mind you, they just held it at bay with this strange blue light."

"Lucario's Aura Sphere." Gary explained with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I get it, gramps. He saved your skin."

"No, not just that," the Professor explained. "He, also, was able to manifest Aura Spheres. And much else, from what I could tell."

Gary knit his brows, and then looked at Tracey, who nodded. Tracey hadn't actually been there to see that part, but he believed the professor's story. "He told us he was an Aura Guardian, from Rota," Tracey explained. "One of the last."

Gary glanced out the window, looking down the path that leg back to town, and then eased into a reclining position in his seat. He didn't question the integrity of Tracey or his grandfather, though he had always believed the guardians to be more of a myth. That certainly would've made the strange clothing fall into place, though. He was a bit flabbergasted by that.

"Wow," he said.

* * *

"This is really hard," Melody complained.

He didn't think so. At least, not insofar as she seemed to be having trouble with it. "Gulpin is pretty sticky, but I dunno if I'd have used him to help me climb." Certainly not a ladder

Melody snarled, to let Ash know that she didn't care at all for his assessment. She was climbing the ladder to the compound watch-tower with Gulpin's help, which actually just meant that she was using most of her own power to make it happen, and fighting against Gulpin as often as the Stomach Pokémon's Sticky Hold ability was actually helping her.

She wouldn't fall, that was for sure, but her progress to this point, restricted as she was by the manacles, was fairly meager. The rungs were too far apart for the chains that bound her ankles, and Gulpin could do very little for that, except make sure she had a good handhold to pull the rest of her body awkwardly up with. It looked like a grueling effort, even with all they'd been through.

If it had been anyone else, anywhere else, he'd of just put Bulbasaur to the task of pulling her and Gulpin the rest of the way up. He knew that it would just make her angry, though, and he could understand why. They were a team, but to a certain extent, both of them needed to do things under their own steam, and this was one of them.

And Melody, it seemed, wasn't the only one who was having trouble adjusting to the new change. Almost every trainer in the corps was taking the new training rather hard. Doc, wherever he was at a given time, seemed to be getting by alright. At least, whenever Ash caught a glimpse of him, he was.

He wondered how most trainers could go this long without truly learning the same level of dependence on his Pokémon that he'd gained. That was what Surge had been talking about, right? Pokémon were there for all of them, and they had to learn the best way to cooperate, so that things went well for everyone. That meant knowing where and how to put them to use, outside of just using them to battle other trainers.

Granted, he hadn't known anything about the story of Lucas Vermillion or the origin of the city for that matter, but the ideal behind it that Surge seemed to want everyone to absorb, wasn't really all that alien of a concept to him. Maybe it had never seemed so broad-stretching in his mind, before, but the idea of humans and Pokémon being inseparable had been pretty much been with him his whole life.

It was a little stunning to see just how few people had a good grasp on it. They'd run the obstacle course again yesterday, after returning to the compound. Of fifty trainees, he was one of six to make it to the finish before Surge called an end to the exercise.

He'd never thought of himself as exceptional in that regard. Working with Pokémon to achieve results outside of battle was something that had always seemed obvious to him. Intuitive, even. Then again, perhaps that was unfair. He had to remember that he'd been put in a lot of very crazy situations throughout his career, and he took steps almost all the time to do things that would not have seemed to be of much interest to your average battler or coordinator.

Thus far he'd heard complaints from the other recruits about having too few, or the wrong types of Pokémon for the tasks they were put to, or that their Pokémon themselves were simply not developed enough to be of any help. He'd always kept an open mind about what a Pokémon could truly be capable of, though, and maybe that was what other people were chiefly lacking, aside from his level of experience.

"Alright," Melody huffed, still almost eight meters below him, on the ladder, evidently tired of continuing. "How would you do it?"

It was an odd rush, really. There had only just been a few times in his journeys that people asked him for advice. He'd always felt comfortable giving it, really, but it was still a strange dynamic. Most of the time he felt like he needed someone _else's_ advice and yet there someone was, asking him what _he_thought of it all. It made him feel strange, and yet, strangely pleased with himself.

He thought about it for a second. "Use Shelder. Stand on her lid like a platform. When she opens her shell, you'll come up about nine inches higher than you'd be able to reach on your own. From there, just grab the next highest rung, and do the same thing there." When she looked up at him in disbelief, he consoled her misgivings about it. "Shelder ought to be able to follow you up by your boot-laces, so don't worry about that part so much. Pokémon are good at taking care of themselves."

He watched her do it, slowly and carefully, confident in the process, and ultimately in the ones carrying it out. He didn't think that Melody's difficulty in the training they'd been put to came from having too few, or the wrong kinds of Pokémon. He wasn't sure it came from a lack of experience, either, though.

He didn't want to be frank or forward about it, but he'd suffered it enough recently to know what a lack of confidence looked like. Whether it was in herself or her Pokémon, it didn't really matter. He guessed it just had a lot to do with what they'd been through. The Corps was tough, and he wasn't sure he'd have made it this far without her kicking him in the ass.

Who'd been there to motivate her, though? All she'd had that whole time was Glen and Terry telling her she was useless. He supposed that having all the answers since Assistive Training had started, and constantly correcting her left and right didn't exactly make up the difference, either.

He was at a split-decision to help her over the lip of the watchtower nest, or wait for her to pull herself up on her own. He didn't want to seem like he didn't care, but he also had to be careful not to undermine anything she might've been getting out of it. She settled it for him by reaching out for his hand all on her own. It was a meager gesture, since she couldn't extend her hand more than about a half-foot, but it was plain to see what it was.

He gave her a two-handed tug over the lip, and then shot a thumbs up to her Shelder that landed on the plank flooring with a somersault flourish. "See? Nailed it."

Melody rolled her eyes at him, as she withdrew her Pokémon and hunkered down across the nest, taking a long forlorn look across the compound. He thought about telling her all the ways the choice she'd made would've eventually worked for her, but he knew that was equally likely to start an argument as it was to abate one. He wasn't sure he wanted to approach it from that angle anyways.

Even though she was his age, it struck him then, that Melody was a _novice _trainer. It sortof made sense though. He didn't remember her even having any Pokémon of her own the last time they'd met.

"Melody," he began, scratching at the wooden balustrade with the edge of his manacle. "I know I've asked you this before, but, what are you planning to do once this is all over and done?"

"Still just worried about getting there," Melody said, with a few rough scratches of her own to the railing. "I'm thinking I might take a little trip around the mainland, before I head back to Shamuti, though. It's not like they're gonna give us postings after this is all over with. The Corpsmen just protect people and Pokémon wherever they happen to be at the time. That's why a lot of trainers take this course, coz you can do it from pretty much anywhere."

That made sense, he guessed. There had been a lot of general lessons, this past week, mixed in with the normal drilling and PT. How to spot suspicious activity. How to signal for help if you and your Pokémon were in trouble and couldn't get out of it. The other day, he'd given himself a decently deep cut on a lose nail set into one of the obstacles, and Baily had used it as an opportunity to teach them how to properly clean and bind a wound.

Surge had even taught him this neat trick to keep other trainers from throwing out poke balls, if you were fast enough! He hadn't quite gotten it down, yet, but he'd watched their LT do it a few times now.

In the end, though, that really wasn't the answer he thought he wanted. "What're you gonna do when you see Terry and Glen, again?" he asked, wondering aloud.

"What do you mean?"

Ash shrugged. "They kinda bailed out on you."

"So?"

Ash glanced over. "Well, aren't you mad?"

Melody, perplexingly, only rolled her shoulders, and didn't face him. "Yeah," she admitted.

"What are you gonna do about it? It's not like they gave you much of a chance for closure." Ash asked, leadingly. The two islanders had been gone by the time he and Melody had come to that day, without a word of farewell. "I mean, they did nothing but talk down to you the whole time they were here, and then give up on us when things got tough."

Melody didn't expect him to understand, but after a moment of awkward silence, she answered truthfully. "Nothing. I don't need to rub it in their faces, Ash. I had the guts to stick with it, and they didn't. It's just as simple as that. It can end there."

Something in Ash truly wanted her to have some real vindication, though. He felt like Melody deserved more credit than he did. The opposition she'd faced seemed somehow greater than his own. Like him, she'd been subjected to Doc's ridiculous ploy, but she'd been dumped on every step of the way by her two islander companions, and treated without an ounce of the respect that she deserved, both for sticking to her ideals, and keeping her courage when the other two had withered. "They weren't half as good as you. Either of them."

"Seems like it's their problem, then. Not mine." Melody sighed. "Look, I really appreciate you saying that. But, well... I know this whole personal pride thing is like, a big deal to you mainlanders, but, it's just different for us, Ash."

Ash had never really thought of the differences between the people in the places he traveled, mostly because he'd always been a rambler. A man outside of the local culture, he'd only ever considered his own differences from certain individuals, rather than the entire locale's difference from his own homeland. Her quip made him feel a little stupid, actually, but all he could do was ask her to clarify what exactly she meant.

"I live on a freakin' Island, Ash. Shamuti is like, six square miles. It's not like I can go my whole life without ever seeing them again. Hell, Terry is my second cousin by marriage, and Glen used to date my older sister. We're not just people who happen to be from the same town, Ash. I just have to put it behind me. I can't ignore them, and I wouldn't be smart to drive the wedge further."

"I dunno." Ash commented, "I can see not wanting to make things worse, but they just don't seem like the kind of people I'd want to put my faith in again, is all."

"And I understand your point, I suppose, but it's not like living my life always waiting for the knife to hit me between the shoulder-blades is going to be any better. I can't always be expecting someone to disappoint me, even if they've done it before. Eventually, I'd never trust anyone, and that seems like an awful lot worse way to live, than being too nice to people who let me down, and opening myself up to further disappointment."

"I guess I sortof see what you mean, but..." Ash just sortof faded off there, though, because he wasn't really sure he had a worthwhile counterpoint.

Melody gave a forlorn sigh, and worked herself up out of a sitting position, clambering sideways in the small confines of the nest to sit beside him. It was a cold night for May, and she found her shoulder almost magnetically drawn to his. She'd been shivering for a while now, but Ash was warm.

"Maybe it's just that I live in a smaller world than you. You don't see it, because the way you are, with all the traveling and the visiting new places and meeting new folks, but it's like, if every person in your life was a drop of water; you'd be standing in the rain, Ash. I'd just be cupping my hands under a leaky faucet. I know it's hard to appreciate, but, people come along in the world, and we can either catch them, or let them go, but if we're not careful, even those of us who are standing in the downpour will have nothing left to hold on to when the rain is over. Those of us who have to be thankful for the handful we get, especially so," she explained, gesticulating as well as she was able in handcuffs. When she was done, she looked over at him, but he only stared back blankly.

She looked down at her manacles with a muted groan. "Maybe I'm not making any sense. I'm no good with analogies. The point is, that forgiveness is something you can never have too much of, Ash."

Ash lived in a world of moral black and whites, and he knew that. More than anything else, the corps had affirmed that for him. You did the right thing, and everything was copasetic. Maybe it wasn't fantastic, but generally, good things happened, if the process that went into it was sound. Conversely, if you fucked up, or acted like a complete dick, good things were not like to befall you. Garbage in, Garbage out. In fact, Surge and his DIs were generally on the lookout for this sort of thing, and would do their level best to make your life miserable if they caught you at it. It was as infallible out there in the real world as it was in here, though, even if most people weren't nearly as tenacious in their reciprocation of unacceptable behavior.

In his mind, that was what kept the world spinning. Good people respected each other, and were respected in turn for their consideration. Even people who were generally not a huge credit to themselves could typically get along just fine, so long as they were considerate. People who acted like jerks generally got what they deserved, and were treated in kind; either eventually shaping up their act, or becoming perpetually disliked by their peers.

He'd been there, and been through it. When he acted like a jerk (and now and again, he still did, even if he had gotten better over the years), someone was usually there to cuff him one, if life didn't already have a nasty surprise for him waiting for just such an opportunity to strike. And though, sometimes bad things, even monumentally bad ones did befall him, they were usually not without reason. He couldn't think up a reason for him having suffered such a terrible short-coming in the Sinnoh League, really, no matter how he let the thought roll around in his mind, but sure enough there was a reason he'd inadvertently fallen into the corps, just the same as he'd lost to Uranium, just the same as he'd caught a whole bunch of flak from Misty and his other friends over coming back to Kanto without notice: He'd acted rashly, and in the heat of the moment, without thinking of where it might get him, as was his weakness. The league short-fall had to be just one of those things that happened, random chance that was good or bad, minor or severe, with no real reason for it. It got back to that bad luck thing that he just couldn't figure out.

But, to him, the most important part of this system was that people acknowledged it when it happened. People who made the mistakes had to know that there were consequences, and they had to address those problems, or they would always continue to be problems. When he was wrong (and when someone could really pin him down on it with some solid evidence) he admitted it. He tried to fix things, and make them right. Nobody had ever accused him of going out of his way to clear the air when he was dead right, like Melody was apparently going to, though.

He'd had a long career, and during it he'd humbled and educated many an adversary and rival who's understanding of Pokémon or the world was clearly flawed. He knew that, because usually they admitted it to him. He could even recall how many times his days on the road had come to a close with someone giving him a speech that started with the words "You really showed me." Misty had always complained about that sort of thing making his head swell up, and there probably was some truth in that, but more so than a confirmation of his ego, it had always been a confirmation that things, generally speaking, were fair and that he was on the right track. He didn't think that his was the only way to do things-that couldn't have been the case, since he was always learning new ways to do stuff-but those acknowledgements had told him that at least the things he _was_ doing were _right._

But he could also see the logic in Melody's way of thinking. Sortof. It was difficult for him to accept that Melody wouldn't get her just deserts from them, but maybe she was right. Maybe the fact that they hadn't succeeded in the program would be enough punishment in and of itself. Or maybe she just meant that punishment was an unnecessary part of it, altogether, which was even more difficult to grasp.

He guessed that he could understand that life was too short to go around settling scores with everyone who wronged you, but he just had to believe that there was some great equalizer out there, even for something like this, or else what was to stop good things from happening to bad people, and bad things from befalling people like Melody, who were too nice to even take satisfaction that was rightfully theirs, on a regular basis?

It made his head hurt, really. He wasn't much of a philosopher, and he hated it when things got complex. He liked his simple view of the world just fine. Still, what she said sounded like it was the right view, if only because it was truly benevolent.

"Alright," he said, finally. "I get that."

"Good," Melody said, just a little too quickly. "Because there's something I wanted to ask you:"

Somewhere between looking at him, and looking at the planking between her feet, Melody launched into a deluge of words and half-formed thoughts that bombarded him faster and harder than he was really prepared to respond to them.

"I know I really didn't start this off with the best ever impression, yanno, with all this that and the other over the PLF stuff, and It's been a really really long time since we saw each other last-and I haven't forgotten what a bitch I was to you week 'afore last; I hope you can forgive me for that, I felt like hell over it, honest-but I mean, well, it sorta gets back to what I said before, about people coming and going in our lives. You remember? Anyways, I understand what a blip on the radar I must be to you, and all, with all your travels and adventures and stuff, but I-I dunno, I just uh, this is really gonna sound silly but hear me out: I sortof thought that your friend Misty would like, gobble you up once she got the chance, and, I respected that, so, yanno, I kept my nose out of it, but, I sortof, maybe, at one point, like, a long time ago, might've had a crush on you. A, uh, super-big crush, actually, and I just-well, it's like I said, sometimes we let people go, and sometimes we catch them, so, I mean, I gotta take a chance here, because I don't think I'm like to get another crack at you, yanno? I get that we're different people, from different places and different walks of life, but I..."

Melody paused then, even if to Ash it seemed only to take in a deep breath. In reality, it was really sortof hoping that he'd have caught on and stopped her from rambling right now, with at least some sort of response, but when she looked back there was still only that blank stare. It didn't look like rejection at least, but the fact that it resembled stark confusion didn't help much either, so she had no choice but to keep pouring her heart out.

"I don't know how else to say it, Ash. I watched you save the world. I watched you give it all, when nobody else could. You brought life to something I'd never even believed in. What happened that day is the whole reason I decided to take the shrine more seriously. In a way, you're basically the inspiration for all of this! I mean, I don't want you to think I had designs on you from the beginning, but, well, If that girl isn't going to take what's hers, I'm not afraid to eat off someone else's plate. If you want, once this is over, maybe you and I could, I dunno, travel together? Spend more time with each other? You're going to be here in Kanto, a while, aren't you? I know you don't know me like you know her, or whatever, but maybe we could get there."

She'd told herself that she wouldn't stutter. She'd silently practiced this speech to him about a hundred times, lying in her bunk over the past weeks, but still, the words felt somehow foreign coming across her tongue, and she fumbled. "We don't ever have to be b-boyfriend and girlfriend or anything, well I mean, I wouldn't be against that either, it's just..."

Ash let out an airy noise, which might have passed for the beginnings of a laugh, or the most muted of sighs. His face still seemed taut with misunderstanding, though it had taken on a deep shade of pink.

A few seconds passed, and then those seconds stretched out into something that must've been closer to a minute. Contrary to what she might've imagined about this moment, this time was not some prelude to a kiss, wherein they slowly drew towards one another, and their lips touched. It was just a silence; painfully awkward and interminably long.

"I." he finally said...

But it was the only word he could seem _to_say. When he repeated it for the fifth time, she hung her head in mortification, and pulled the brim of her cover down low. "Well, now I've embarrassed the hell out of myself!" She half-groaned, half-whispered.

When he dumbfoundedly said the word "I" again, she cut him off with a yelp.

"Don't! Uh, don't answer just now. Just think about it alright? I'm gonna go, uh, patrol the west end of the complex." Her descent from the watchtower was much faster than her ascent, being a straight-down, sliding trip to the ground. He watched her scamper off into the wooded perimeter, still mostly unable to process what had just occurred.

He sat in a sort of stupefaction until he heard someone coming up the ladder. He thought maybe it was Melody coming back, and that made him feel powerfully embarrassed, so it was with a sort of double-edged relief that he watched Doc come up over the edge with the help of a powerful-looking Primeape.

He didn't say anything at first, thinking at once that his Primape was solid proof that Doc had at least owned a Mankey at one point, but deciding just as quickly he didn't care to comment for fear of where the conversation would lead. The distraction from his consternation did not occupy his thoughts for long.

Doc rounded on him first, though. "What's your problem?"

Ash had to wonder if the distress showed on his face. "No," he said at first, flustered. "Nothing," he amended."

Doc looked him up and down once, and then shrugged. He had his own problems to deal with. He didn't need to listen to Ash whine, anyways. He sat down by the railing. "I'll take this post. Go patrol the east stretch."

Ash, evidently thankful for the retreat, bolted, Bulbasaur already spilling from his poke ball, as he slid down the slats. Doc waited until he was a good ways off, and then dug his cross-transceiver out of his pocket, dialing Holiday's number.

Just as it had for the past several days, the line rang, and rang, and rang, but nobody picked it up.

In desperation, he let it roll till Holiday's voicemail came on. It was a very old recording, made sometime during the end of Holiday's post-graduate studies, he could only assume. Visually, he seemed the same. Perhaps a bit more modest, and with a much more modern and professional looking haircut, but really, it was the voice that caught him by surprise.

"You've reached Holly Christmahannukwanzaramadan XII, Ph.D. ABD. I couldn't make it to the videophone, but if you leave a message, with your name and number, I'll do my best to get in contact with you as soon as I'm able." He sounded so fundamentally different, and not just in a 'young professional looking to put his foot in the door of the private-sector" sort of way. Not once did the recorded Holiday use the word "bitch" or "fuck" or even "cunt", (which he would sometimes use in an otherwise clean sentence just to throw people for a loop). He didn't even make faces and sneer at the camera. It was just weird. Had Holiday always been like that, in school?

He didn't have any more time to think it over, because the recording beeped to let him know that he was free to leave a message. "Dammit, Holiday. I really need some fuckin' help here, bro. Where the hell are you?" he cursed at the speaker. "Call me back when you get this. There's some bad shit going down here in Kanto, and I'm about to be right smack in the middle of it.

"Remember me telling you how someone tipped off Lt. Surge about me? Well, I just got done overhearing how the League is calling in people from all over the globe for a consortium tomorrow, at Indigo Plateau to discuss the possibility of a PLF attack on the Kanto Battle Tower!" He'd listened to the conversation from just outside Surge's office, actually.

"If I had to guess, and I don't, I'd say that I'm gonna end up pretty high in the list of suspects if Surge and his league finger-man come back from this consortium with any bright ideas."

* * *

Anabel and Riley made it to the rear door of the house the professor had directed them to, to find Deliah waiting for them, a tray with two plates of sandwiches in her hand. The sandwiches were cut into triangles, and arranged with the inside corners facing out, like a pinwheel formation, a sprig of mint stuck under one triangle. Two slim but tall glasses of ice-water were nearly opaque with condensation behind them. Anabel was surprised. Pallet was a small town, and they had not been that long on the march. Deliah was a very meticulous and gracious host, and she needed no deeper insight to see how obvious that was. Her hasty preparation was evidence enough.

Riley gently refused his at first, claiming that he was long on the road and did not want the taste of such finely prepared food sickening him to his trail-rations. The woman did not take no for an answer, however, and nearly shoved one of the triangles down his craw before he finally gave in. Anabel took hers gratefully, and wolfed it down with an unladylike appetite, right there on the back porch, which seemed to please Deliah to no end. She offered seconds, but both of them declined. The water tasted crisper and cleaner than anything Anabel had ever tasted, but she was fairly sure that was just thirst slanting her opinion.

Anabel felt guilty when Deliah led her across the crème-colored carpet, her Mr. Mime bringing up the rear with a vacuum cleaner, but the woman assured her that it was no trouble. All her guilt disappeared anyways when she was led to a shower-room, and offered a heap of clean soft towels. All Anabel felt then was relief.

Deliah laid a set of folded sleeping clothes on top of the towels, as well. They were jersey cotton, and light blue, decorated with a print-pattern of Pokémon elemental symbols, in a rainbow of colored circles. "Sorry for the PJs, but I don't have any girls clothes save my own." It went without saying that Deliah's clothes would not fit her. She was a thin, teenage girl, whereas Deliah was a healthy—and honestly shapely—grown woman. Not to mention there was nearly a half-foot difference between them. "You and my son seem about of a size though," she paused, seeming to give it a moment's hesitance. "You don't have to wear them if you don't want, but I figure that way I can wash what you're wearing now."

"That would be...great." She was at a loss of words for how nice she was being treated, her, in essence a perfect stranger to Deliah, not to mention a boarder in her own home.

"Just leave them folded on the counter-top there." Deliah pointed. "I'll collect them once you're done. They should be all clean and dry in a couple hours. If you're already in bed by then, I'll leave them on the bottom bunk, so at least you'll have them in the morning."

"Thank you, Mrs..." Anabel floundered. She didn't want to seem overly familiar.

Deliah blushed. "Oh, you can just call me Deliah, sweetheart. Its fine."

"Thank you, Deliah. You're very kind."

"You're more than welcome."

Anabel could more than just see the heart showing through Deliah's eyes. She could FEEL it. It was like the woman had so much...Love—Anabel could think of no other word for such diligent compassion—that she needed to share it with anyone who could be troubled to take some. Anabel found herself hoping that there was someone, perhaps many someones out there that loved this woman the way she deserved to be loved, in kind.

Their hostess left Anabel to her business, and the Salon Maiden climbed into the shower stall, and turned on the tap. It burned her at first, it came out so hot. The preference of a home-maker, she supposed, needing hot-water for more than just comfort. She tempered it some with the cold knob until it was satisfactory, and then eased herself under the shower-head. She let it pour through the curls of her hair, weighing them down flat against her neck.

She had just felt tired and worried over the past twenty-four hours, too distracted by all that had happened. She thought back to the news-report, the shaky amateur recording of the Battle tower burning, smoldering, and crashing to the ground almost like a spring of cards in reverse. It had been shocking then, but the real fear of it hadn't quite hit her, until that moment, when she finally let her guard down. She brought her hands up to her face, and put her fingertips over her eyes. She could've been in there. She could've died yesterday, probably would have, if not for the intervention of the Guardians. Of Riley.

Did everyone think she was dead? Scott? All the other Frontier Brains? The league? All of Kanto? Riley wanted her to walk away, but how could she just let them all believe that—and what would happen if she didn't? Would there be more attacks? Would there be more attempts on her life? Why had she been picked? Had she been picked at all, or had it just happened by random chance?

It was all too much to think about, so she didn't. She let herself resume her inner calm, if it still managed to feel like apprehension, took a long moment to clear her thoughts, and then leaned down to scrub herself clean. She started with her feet.

Fifteen minutes later, she was pink and pleased at her appearance again. The pajamas felt a little tight, even on her, but they were more than she had expected, and she certainly would not complain about them. She padded along, still barefoot, and back down the staircase, glancing around for Riley. She caught sight of him through the screen door, standing just past the back porch. When she stepped quietly outside she found that, sure enough, he was working on tying a parchment message to the leg of a Pidgey. She felt more guilty than amused. When he finally let it fly, he turned, noticing her for the first time.

"I'm sure Deliah would let you use the videophone."

Riley only shrugged at her. "I'm no expert, but I can't imagine that those sorts of communications are not monitored." For all his seeming backwardness, she had to remember, Riley was no fool. "Besides, the people I need to reach cannot be contacted by phone."

To her, people like that didn't seem the very reliable sort, but then, what did that make Riley, exactly?

A funny thing happened then. Deliah stepped through the door behind her and a series of severe glances went around. Deliah looked to a plate and glass sitting on top of the wooden porch-rail, and then to Riley. Riley looked at the plate, half eaten and abandoned, looked guilty, then looked at the ground. Without a single word, the stiff and stern Aura Guardian walked straight back to it, and reluctantly shoved the rest into his mouth.

Satisfied at that, Deliah sat down on a nearby gliding chair, and heaved out a sigh. Her work in the house apparently done, she nursed a glass of steaming liquid that smelled like more than tea and less than bourbon. Somewhere in between floated the mellow notes of honey. Just the strong whiff of the hot toddy she'd gotten as Deliah passed her made Anabel feel relaxed, so she knew it had to be decently strong.

The woman sipped and smiled, then said plainly to the tall man busy horking down cucumber sandwich; "I've only just got the one spare bedroom, so I will sleep on the sofa tonight, and you can use the master bedroom."

Anabel was about to make mention of the fact that—at least from what Deliah had told her—the spare bedroom had a bunk-bed, but then she realized that their host might've been making the announcement for her own benefit, feeling she might be uncomfortable sleeping in the same room as Riley. Or maybe it was just the idea of keeping boys and girls separate, particularly young teenage girls and boys not too distant into their twenties, struck Deliah as particularly important. You had to go through the living room to get from one bedroom to the other, but the way from the living room to the upstairs bedroom...well, you could just creep right up there, and nobody'd be any the wiser. Her and Riley were pretty strictly platonic, she was sure, from both sides of the line, but how could Deliah know that?

The idea made her blush with embarrassment, in spite of how well Deliah had played it off. Riley, however, choked on his second bite of sandwich. After a moment of hacking, he stopped to lick cream cheese and breadcrumbs from his lips. "I absolutely could not." Evidently the necessity behind the kindness was lost on him. He just saw it as uncomfortable gesture he would not accept.

There was a stare-off then, which would've made her laugh under any other circumstance. Deliah's unflinching nature to offer what was hers to offer, and Riley's nature to politely decline anything he did not strictly need. It went on for some time, and Anabel was almost certain that it would be Riley who broke apart first. Deliah suddenly let up, though, and gave another sip at her drink. "Fine. I'll lay out some blankets and pillows, and pull out the hide-a-bed for you, then. You'll stay for breakfast, though, won't you?"

She had appraised him, Anabel realized. The whole time she'd been sizing him up, just so see how he'd react. She felt herself awaken to a new layer of Deliah, then. Outside was this bubbly, giving person, and in truth that was the purest form of her, but like all mothers, she did have a sort of low cunning to her, that balanced everything in its own place. A glint in her eyes gave it all away, but Riley was seemingly ignorant of that, as well as the implication.

"I don't think I'll... It may be very early..." Riley stammered.

"_Just take the truce you fool," s_he wanted to yell at him—for that was almost certainly what it was—but eventually, Deliah's long, powerful stare turned him to mush anyways.

"T-Thank you. I'll do that." He said, with a sigh.

They sat for a little while, talking about how cool the weather was, but how it had turned to summer before any of them knew it. Riley commented on how fresh and crisp the air seemed to be in Pallet Town, how the place seemed much more removed from the cities and pollution of the major Kantonese metropolitan hub, how it must've been the air coming off the sea that did it. Anabel herself complimented the woman's gardening, which both she and Riley then sat admiring while Deliah pointed out her particular favorites.

The woman grew such enormous and beautiful flowers you would've thought she was half Roselia: White Carnations, Pink Chrysanthemums, sky-blue Daises, candy-cane striped Tulips, calico Lilies, a patch of vanilla Orchids in the vegetable plot that had no business surviving in such a climate but still somehow managed it under her care, not to mention the rose-bushes that rimmed nearly the whole yard, and their many hundreds of amber-colored blooms, each nearly the size of both Anabel's fists.

Then they retired, Riley to the couch after a few moments of frantic work by Deliah and her Mr. Mime whom she called "Mimey." To his credit, Riley did try to help, but Deliah only shooed his efforts. Once they were done, Riley climbed under the covers of the fold-out and Lucario took up residence around his feet. By the time Deliah shut off the lights and swept Anabel up the stairs they could already hear Riley quietly snoring.

Deliah was polishing off the last few drops of her hot toddy by the time she'd gathered enough additional bed-clothes and pillows that she felt comfortable in having offered enough to make her guest suitably comfortable. This meant that she'd left and came back to the room three times now, with armloads of fluffed down-pillows, two of her nicest cotton sheets, and a duvet from the cedar chest in the hall. It was that third time she came in, that she found Anabel standing there, brushing her fingertips over something on Ash's desk.

A photograph, she realized when she stepped over, sat down her empty cup beside it, and looked it over as well. Her son, with his three best friends. Ash was standing in the middle of them, obviously in the midst of a laugh, his face all open-mouthed joy. Pikachu laid out on top of his head, caught between trying to keep his balance and pose properly for the picture, the expressive Pokémon seeming likewise happy. Brock, to the left was all smirks and squints like he always was, one arm tucked over Ash's shoulder in a brotherly manner, as he stooped slightly to be photographed at equal height with his friend. Misty to his other side, her bunched fist gripped tightly at his opposite sleeve, another hand clasping at Ash's ear as she tweaked it, her face a mask of indignation and vengeance. The body-language was all wrong, though. Nobody pressed that close to someone they were really angry with.

The picture had been taken on the road. Since neither of Ash's hands was visible, and since he'd likely have been grappling with Misty if that were not the case, it seemed likely as not that he'd taken it himself. Her son was very casual about those sorts of things, and so this was a rare glimpse into how truly happy his training adventures made him. He was a memory-maker, not a memory-saver. She tried to encourage him to buy disposable cameras or something, while he was out and about, even going so far as to include one in her care-packages to him a few times. It'd never proven much use, though.

This photograph had been on one such, actually, and was the only decent photo to come of it. There were three other pictures, all obscured by Ash's finger in front of the lens, and one picture of Misty that Ash had snapped of her in a not so flattering state of half-awake fury, the source of which Deliah could only guess, but that had probably proven the doom of the camera itself. It'd come back to her in the mail as mostly plastic shards sealed in a sandwich bag with a note from her son that'd read "Sorry Mom—do you think you can still get the film out?"

It seemed odd, though, that Anabel would be as enamored with the photograph as she had been. She glanced over. "See someone you know?"

"Ash," she said simply. She knew Brock as well, but for a moment that seemed to be forgotten. The word came out of her mouth like the tolling of a bell, signifying a truth that should've been obvious. She turned sharply toward Deliah. "That's your son, isn't it? That's whose room this is." It shouldn't have been revelatory. It had been a long time. Over a year since she'd last seen Ash, but she couldn't ever forget what she'd felt there...

She'd known a thousand hearts, and seen the things that lurked inside them. She'd known people more deeply than they truly knew themselves, in some cases, more deeply than she'd wanted to. Shed known one or two more deeply than they could stand, if she set the lies she told to defend her own heart aside. Every one different, every one filled with lightness and darkness, good and bad.

But when she'd looked into Ash's heart that day, for the first time, it had changed everything she'd thought she knew.

She should've realized that she'd met Deliah's like before. She wanted more than anything to reach for the woman's hand, to clasp it tight to her heart, to offer her own hand for the same and to simply lose herself in the beautiful soul of Deliah Ketchum, but she didn't. She knew that Deliah would not understand why, even less so if it reduced her to awed tears that Ash's nearly had.

"Yep," Deliah said, having a seat at the desk. "That's my baby boy. You know him?" she realized a second too late that she'd already asked that, but Anabel seemed to know well enough what she meant. The toddy was hitting her a little hard.

"I battled against your son for a Frontier Symbol." She told herself to stay quiet, but her heart wanted to say more. "Your son is..."

Beautiful? Sublime? Messianic? An Angel without the wings? A gift from Arceus that everyone should be thankful for, if they should ever have the briefest moment of time with him?

"Very nice," she said, feeling stupid and embarrassed.

Deliah just smiled one of those mothers' smiles, though. The kind that said: _I know what you're up to. _"Yeah," she agreed. "I miss him. I thought it would be easier now that' he's back in Kanto again, but he hasn't even called me in three weeks."

Anabel felt her heart flutter. "Here in Kanto? I'd heard he went overseas." Scott had said he'd gone off to Sinnoh to compete there after he'd defeated all the frontier brains, and collected all their symbols.

"He did for a while, but it turned out he didn't do so well," Deliah admitted. "I think it really got to him."

The look of tangible sympathy on Deliah's face flooded into her like a deluge, and she didn't need to lay hands upon the woman to know just how deep of a wound she was really talking about. "He left out of here the very next day."

"Do you know where he is now?" Anabel asked.

"He was in Cerulean City last month, but now it's hard to tell. He was supposed be heading out to the Orange Islands, but I know he never ended up there," she admitted, looking very gloomy. She heaved a breath after a moment, though, and gave a reassuring nod, to whether the reassurance was meant to be Anabel's or her own, she didn't know. "Wherever he is, though, I'm sure he's getting along fine. He always does." The way she said it made it obvious that she didn't enjoy it, but that her son had gone much longer than this without checking in with her, and three weeks was no cause for alarm.

Anabel smiled.

"Sure wouldn't kill him to call his mother, though," Deliah muttered, as she stood and made her way from the room. "Goodnight," she said cheerfully, as she paused by the door to flick the light off.

Anabel climbed to the top bunk and lay down in the bed, her heart beating hard. She thought about Ash, and that made it hard to sleep, but eventually, she cradled Ash's pillow in her arms, and her exhaustion overwhelmed her teenage hormones.

* * *

The problem, Misty thought, with "leaving it all out there", was trying to find more to leave the next day, when you had to get back up and do it again. Yesterday she'd come home feeling like hammered shit, and that was a step down from the normal shit she'd felt like the day before that.

At the moment she was sucking wind through a whistle, as she jogged through the sand of the cape, trying to keep her legs pumping as she ran alongside her Pokémon, huffing out a weak cadence to keep time, but her brain was somewhere miles away. Partly to avoid the screaming of her muscles as she punished them, and partly wandering as her mind always did when she got to thinking too hard about her daily responsibilities.

Triathletics, she'd decided, when she'd first come up with the training routine. Cycling swimming. From the gym, to the southern end of the cape, then across the lagoon, then back to around to where she'd locked up her bike, before heading back to the gym. Ten miles in all.

Of course, her Pokémon could hardly ride bicycles, so she decided that they'd simply practice moves during that segment of the routine, since she would be more able to conduct them once she was on the bike, given that would be the easiest stretch of the journey for her. She'd do that part first, she'd decided, (very naively she now realized) so that way things would be more evenly paced for the swimming stretch of the routine. She was a good swimmer, but she could hardly be expected to keep pace with water-types, right?

Practicing moves while she warmed up on the bicycle would cut into their frenetic energy early, and make it easier for her to keep the lot of them at a steady pace during the marine stretch. It stood to reason. Not to practice, though.

The bike-ride had been pretty easy, that much was true. And the constant practice of moves all the way out to the lagoon had curtailed the pace of her Pokémon, that was true as well. What she hadn't accounted for was that it would damn near get her drowned. On the very first day, a huge leg-cramp had come up too far off shore to paddle back, from all that pedaling, and she'd had to finish up the better part of a three mile swim without the strength of one leg. The running segment of the routine had been excruciating, but she was too stubborn to quit, and too dedicated to the idea to stop now, four days later, as well.

She figured it wouldn't have been really so bad if she hadn't told them all they'd be doing it every day, until the Whirl Cup came around. She wasn't sure that she was going to last another eight months, but she couldn't back out now, not after she'd made such a big deal about how tough their training was going to be.

The real problem was that as much as the daily triathlon was kicking her ass, all her Pokémon seemed to be doing just fine. Even Marill just kept trucking along, and even Horsea and Goldeen who had to rely on a very tiresome, jarring means of bouncing locomotion to make the land-bound segments of the journey (lacking legs as they were) still seemed to be doing better than her, so it wasn't as though she could even just wait for one of them to give out and use it as an excuse to scale back the exercise a bit. Everyone was waiting on her to catch up more often than not, and that only made her more stubborn about the whole thing. She refused to be the weak link, and so she kept on even when it hurt so bad she thought she would pass out.

There was a break coming up, one of the last before they completed the circuit, so at least she could look forward to that, if not simply for the fact that it meant this would soon be over for the day, and she could resume her normal regimen of things that were only nominally exhausting by comparison; battling challengers, helping Diana and Briana care for the Aquarium, going over gymnasium paperwork with Parker, the usual stuff.

She had let her mind wander for so long, though, that even her, business-oriented and focused as she was, let her mind touch upon subjects she hadn't had the time or inclination to consider lately.

She hadn't talked to Tracey in a while, and she did feel a little bad for that. He'd used to visit the Gym all the time, but she suspected it was less for her and more for Daisy. She wasn't involved in the romantic pursuits of her sisters-in fact, she made a point not to be-but she did have the distinct impression that him and Daisy had been dating for a while there, which was just fine by her reckoning. Not that she cared to compare him to other men her sisters had been involved with in her noticing over the years, or anything-which got back to her making a point of avoid involvement-but she liked Tracy well enough. He was a legitimately nice guy. Thoughtful. Hardworking, which was something neither her sisters nor their typical romantic pursuits seemed to be, at least in her eyes, which could only be a good thing.

Still, it hadn't worked out, whatever it might or might not have been, and Tracey had gradually stopped showing up, after taking a more permanent research position at the Oak Reservation. She made a mental note to call him.

Speaking of needing to call people, Mrs. Ketchum had called and left her a voice-mail several days ago about Ash's birthday coming up. She hadn't been exactly sure where Ash was blowing through currently, and was wondering if she could send her usual care-package and gift to her house, in case he came back through Cerulean, or if she wanted to add anything of her own to it. Misty didn't think Ash was particularly likely to come back and visit her, any more than he was likely to come back home. After all, he'd only done it once in... What was it, three years now? Seriously, how hard was it for that little turd to call his mom?

Not that she minded the call. She was a little sad she had missed it, actually. Deliah was always very sweet and kind to her, even more so than she was to any of Ash's other friends. She didn't have to really wonder why, either. The woman made no secret of her approval towards Misty's poorly hidden feelings for her son.

She frowned and blushed, though the latter went unseen since she had a good flush going on with her intense workout, already. "Seriously, am I that obvious?" she said around the whistle in her mouth

"About what?" a voice beside her asked.

Misty, not prone to her sister's overtly girlish displays of fear or surprise, still could not contain herself for the sake of posterity, and screeched to a halt, slamming both of her arms straight downward, and releasing a high-pitched shriek, at the sudden realization that she had more than Pokémon company.

Her friend Casey had somehow worked her way into the group, and taken up a job alongside her, without her notice. The scream ground all her Pokémon to a sudden stop, and it took her a while to recover enough to dismiss their interest with a wave. She would've said more, but the scream had taken the last bit of air out of her lungs, and so all she could do was slump over and support herself hands-to-knees, and huff. Now was as good a place as any to take a break. Feebly, she made a "T" with her hands, and gave a quick blow on the whistle before spitting it out to dangle from the cord around her neck

Casey just stood there, blinking. "Sorry. I thought you'd seen me. I was into the whole quiet concentration thing, so I didn't try to say anything, but then you started talking."

She held up her hand, to show that it was alright, but it took her a few minutes of deep breathing before she could manage to do anything else. When she finally could she stood with her fists to hips and rocked back and forth slightly on her feet to keep from cramping up. "I was just," she paused to gasp another breath, "thinking out loud."

"Ah." Casey said, imitating her back and forth sway. "So what's with the marathon stuff? You look like you're about to start spring training!"

That made her smile and roll her eyes. Everything pertained to baseball somehow with Casey. It bordered on obsession, really. She even specifically trained Pokémon with her favorite team's colors! Misty liked the girl, though. Casey filled a special niche in the spectrum of friendship. Casey was close to her own age, and was not involved with her professionally, so she didn't have to behave differently around the girl than she might've otherwise, such as with Briana and Diana, and perhaps more uniquely, Casey didn't seem to keep in touch with anyone else in Misty's regular social circles, as far as she was aware, so Misty could talk to her, without having to worry that the things she said would make it back to her through someone else's hearing.

Not that she was much of a gossip, but even she needed someone to confide in every once in a while. She wouldn't now, though, she decided. She didn't need anyone to hear about her stupid crush on Ash, thankyouverymuch! It was better for everyone if she kept that skeleton shoved to the back of the closet. Ash's business was seeping into her life enough without having to lend it that level of drama.

Finally finding her breath, she answered Casey, explaining what it was she hoped to accomplish. As she said it, though, she realized, (rather annoyed) how much the scheme made her sound like Ash. She could imagine that Ash was somewhere doing the exact same thing. Running, jumping, climbing, and tearing ass all around Kanto with his Pokémon. She knew from experience that Ash wasn't the greatest swimmer, and in all honesty, he had to be a pretty piss-poor cyclist if his track-record could speak for itself, but she somehow couldn't see Ash being as worn out by the end of the day as she was.

It made a sort of jealousy well up in her, alongside a humble respect. She'd watched Ash train Pokémon for a decent chunk of her adolescent life, and she knew he was a very hands-on sort when it came to that, and the boy loved to get out there and work hard right alongside his Pokémon, especially during the later years. At first, Ash had just sort of thought that Pokémon training would come naturally to him, a sort of _quod erat demonstrandum_ approach, in which he would simply become a better trainer by being a better trainer. She remembered, looking back, thinking what a flop he'd been in his first season, because of that. He'd really gone on to impress everyone, though, by putting in a lot of hard training during his championship-winning trip through the Orange Islands. He'd deserved his mark in the Palace of Victory. Everyone seemed to forget that, even Ash himself at times, but not her.

"...and I'm hoping that..." she faltered, losing herself in a memory. If she had to think of a time when she and Ash had really grown into friends, and out of their pseudo-rival 'frenemy' relationship, their excursion out on the archipelago was it. They'd spent so much time alone together then, that things could not help but change between them. She still thought of him as a boy most of the time, still that dirty-faced kid that had climbed up out of the water and stolen her bike, but Ash himself had changed as well on that leg of their journey. He'd gone from being that boy, to being something...

She shook her head roughly and just stopped herself from screaming "ENOUGH!" before she remembered what she was going to say to Casey "I'm hoping that it'll help to get us more physically prepared for the Whirl Cup." Her continued huffing hid the pause, and her ongoing flush continued to hide the redness of her cheeks.

_No more thinking about Ash,_ she told herself. _He's doing his own thing, so should you. Get a freaking grip!_

Casey nodded. "Whirl cup. Right," the purple-haired girl rolled her head around. Sounded pretty serious, but Casey didn't have to ask whether or not that was the case. She knew how much the Gym meant to Misty, and how much she'd done for the place since becoming the Leader. She'd been here in Cerulean for most of it, actually.

Two years ago, just shortly after Misty had returned to Cerulean, Casey had decided to try out for the Elektabuzz practice squad, which had honestly been a dream come true for her, when she'd been signed on to the team. It wasn't an active roster spot, or anything, but she got to practice with the team every day during their off-season training camp, as well as twice a week the remainder of the year, and she was a bat-carrier during the regular season-one of the few in the league that actually traveled with their team!

The Elektabuzz were from New Bark, but they did spring training at Pokémon Tech, not far outside of Cerulean, where it was warmer this time of year. Most of the team stayed in Vermillion, since it was relatively equidistant, but she stayed in Cerulean because it was the easier walk.

"I liked your show last month!" Casey said, remembering. "Had to see it on public access. Sorry I couldn't make it! Practice day, yanno?"

Misty had sent the entire team invitations to the event. None had been accepted. The team had been nice enough to send back a group RSVP declining the invitation, as well as their regards and apologies. She understood. "We've all got responsibilities. Maybe next year I can convince my sisters to have it on a weekend."

Casey crossed her fingers in front of herself. "Here's to hoping."

"Did you want to finish up my run with me?" Misty asked, pointing a thumb over her shoulder. "I'd like to chat summore, but I really need to get back to the gym." It was seven thirty now, she noted, glancing at her watch. Odds were good that some trainers would already be waiting to challenger her.

"Can't." Casey said with an over-the-shoulder thumb of her own. She could see several men in running shorts and tanks clomping up the street behind them. That would be the baseball team, she imagined. They were still a long ways off, but they would be here soon, and headed in the opposite direction that she was. "Got my own run to make. Looks like you'd better put it in gear, anyways, Misty. Your Pokémon are starting to look impatient."

Misty nodded, and turned her head slightly to glare back at her Pokémon, who all made a sudden attempt to seem very disinterested in her, and not at all like she was holding them up. "Right."

She huffed in another lungful of air, partly because she knew she would soon be starving for it, and partly to give a bedraggled sigh. Being a responsible young adult didn't seem to leave very much time for the more simple distractions of life to squeeze in edgewise.

"I'll see you around, though. Maybe come by the gym for a battle. Still don't have a Cascade Badge, do I?" Casey said with a wink, making a gun with her fingers, and pretending to fire it at Misty.

Casey had given it a shot two or three times now, but hadn't yet been successful, which Misty could find no explanation for. Casey had a Meganium, and an Elekid, which she was sure to soon evolve into an Elektabuzz. By all rights, she certainly should've stomped Misty by now. The gym leader had suspected that the first few times, Casey had been intentionally going easy on her, but perhaps the girl's heart just wasn't in it. Maybe she was just more talented than she gave herself credit for, though. It was hard to tell.

Either way, the prospect delighted her. She always enjoyed battling against Pokémon that were strong against water-types. That was part of the challenge of training a specific type of Pokémon, after all. "We'll be waiting for you," she said, with pride. "Maybe I'll find some time to come watch you guys practice, next week."

They exchanged goodbyes and went their separate ways. Misty tried to get her thoughts back in gear along with her legs, and give some thought to her upcoming battles, as they renewed their brisk jog back to where she'd left her bike at the docks, but it was no use. Aggravatingly, her thoughts floated back to Ash, and this time she couldn't stop herself from roaring in defiance of the memory that crept into her brain. "Ugh! It wasn't even a real hug, dammit!"

In fairness, her Pokémon barely broke their stride, so used to these types of rantings were they. Still, when she reached up to do what she usually did, which was snatch off his hat, and mash it up in her firsts as some measure of retribution for her recent meeting with the trainer crawling into her thoughts while she tried to get work done-as if he were right there to watch her rough up his beloved cap-she herself was given a moment of pause. She forgot she wasn't wearing it.

It was a very comfortable hat, really, so that was an easy thing to do, but the sudden realization that she didn't have it made her feel inadequate. Partially exposed, almost. She settled with adjusting her pony-tail in an effort to seem less crazy, as she mulled over the sudden and new insecurity.

Caught up as she was, Misty barely even noticed that they'd made it back to her bike, until she was methodically undoing the new bike lock-Ash had walked right out of town with her old one!-and riding away back into town.

Was this how Ash felt without his hat? She remembered all those years ago when Ash had lost it over having his hat stolen by what would eventually become his Primeape. Of course, that Mankey had pretty much beat the tar out of Ash, (and later gone on to do the same to Team Rocket, and Brock, before chasing them half-way down Route 7) before he snatched it, so there was that as well, but Misty wondered if there wasn't something Samson-esque about it as well. She had a tangential thought about Ash somehow deriving all this strength as a battler from his hat. Honestly, she'd never seen him go into a fight without it on. Hell, half the time he slept in the damn thing. She pictured him as a slightly withered and clueless version of himself, barely able to properly throw a poke ball, without a hat on, and it made her feel a little guilty for accepting it in the first place.

She had a feeling that it would cause a massive amount of fallout if she gave it back, though. It had essentially been given to her as an oath, and her acceptance of it was an approbation that she fully agreed with its terms. Ash _wasn't _a bad friend. If she were to just give it back, no matter how gently she did it, it would seem like she was throwing it in his face, like "Here, take your hat back, asshole."

Logically, he knew her silly hypothesis was exactly that-silly-but she did realize that there had to be a certain amount of discomfort to give up something you were used to having, especially when it was as nice as a League Expo cap.

When they finally made it back to the gym, there were, of course, trainers waiting in the lobby, though she was pleased to find that Parker was attending to them far better than her sisters ever would've bothered to. Not one of them leapt to their feet, having already been informed that Misty would see to them just as soon as she had everything was in order, rather than the standard forewarning of "I dunno, just like, ask her when she gets here, or whatever." Only Parker himself spoke up, as she approached the reception desk.

"Good morning, ma'am," he said with nautical intonation. "Three challengers to see you."

"Very good," she responded, having heard him say it so many times now. He smiled at her use of his patois. "Have the new things for the gift-shop in the aquarium wing come in, yet?"

"Yes, just this morning. I have them right here, actually." He led her gaze to a collection of several three by three boxes, covered in shipping labels strewn about behind the desk. He was diligently looking over the packing slips to ensure completeness of the order. "Everything seems to be in order, so far as I've checked. The T-shirts and mugs are all here. The designs your sisters came up with are quite charming."

She angled her gaze over the lip of one of the boxes, and took what she was looking for. "We're short a hat."

Parker watched the hat rise from the box, and he watched the hat go neatly onto her head. Then, he looked down at the packing list and said, "Strangest thing. Says here we're supposed to have ten." He looked over into the box, and made a show of counting. "I only see nine. Wonder what happened to it?"

"Who could say?" She and Parker shared a chuckle, before the young gym-leader turned to police in her Pokémon, whom she could see were already heating the blood of her three challengers, particularly her massive Gyarados as he slithered impressively through the doors and dominated the space within. "I'll page the desk as soon as I'm ready for the first challenger. I need to shower down and make a phone-call, but I shouldn't be too long."

She left down the hall, and made her way toward the office, after ushering her Pokémon into the Gymnasium proper. She was coated in a sheen of sweat, and she smelled of salt-water, but she decided to make her phone call first, as a matter of expediency. Deliah proved not to be there to answer her, likely outdoors tending to her garden, but Misty was sortof thankful for that anyways. She didn't have time for a full-blown conversation and she looked a hot mess at the moment anyways, so she just left a voicemail.

"Hey Mrs. K! I got your message about Ash's care package. Go ahead and send it to the Gym, and I'll take care of it. I found a gift for him I think he might like, too, so he may as well get it all at once." She spun the hat around and pulled it off her head, setting it where she would remember it, atop her desktop keyboard.

"If he doesn't come through by week's-end, I ought to at least be able to flush him out of hiding before his birthday rolls around, and forward it on to wherever he turns up. It was nice to hear from you, either way! I meant to come visit recently..."

It wasn't exactly a lie, after all. She'd fully expected to find Ash at his house, when she'd set out to give him a pounding for ditching Brock and Dawn. She had a feeling that was not exactly the sort of visit her tone suggested, though. "I've just been so busy, here lately. Alright, gotta go. Tell everyone in Pallet 'Hi' for me! Bye Mrs. K!" She hung up the receiver and stepped from the leader's office, into the conjunctive shower room leading to the gymnasium. She hung up her jacket next to where she'd left her Expo hat, and stripped off her running shorts, so that only her one-piece bathing suit remained.

She heard Ash's voice in her head, mockingly praising her for wearing efficient attire in layers, as she stepped under the spigot and pulled the chain on the pool-shower to cleanse herself. The water felt ice-cold as it poured down over her overheated body, even though it was lukewarm

"_You were pretty smart to wear a wet-suit_, he says," she said, making her voice a cacophony of gravely syllables and squeaky vowels, in an exaggerated mockery of Ash's voice. "What an _ass_."

Her brain whirled ahead to her and Ash's visit to her secret cove, as she tilted her head back and let the water rinse over her face, though, and she could feel the head rise under her fingertips as she rubbed them over her cheeks.

Ash's eyes had lingered on her body, and not in an expressly platonic way, either. He looked like someone had grabbed him by his nose and held him there, as he'd come sailing in beside her on Charizard. Hell, he'd barely even flinched when she'd hit him between the eyes with her shoe.

She glanced over her shoulder at the mirror in her office, and observed her reflection through the open door, and the splay of her fingers. She didn't think of herself as attractive in any absolute terms. She tried to have a healthy respect for her body, but it was more out of a sense of duty to her own esteem, than anything. Her sisters were the primping and preening sort, and she'd always felt that if she'd become too interested in her own appearance that eventually it would start to affect the rest of her life, the way it did her sisters.

Daisy wouldn't even show her face until she'd applied make-up in the morning, whereas Violet would have a conniption if anything befell her hair, and with Lily it was all about her nails. Misty never wore any make-up unless her sisters forced it on her, and she kept her hair short, and her nails shorter. She didn't like to appear as though she was a slob, but making sure she looked beautiful had never been a priority. If it ever happened, it was more by accident than intent.

But what about her more _womanly_assets? She'd never really considered it when she was younger, and evidently neither had Ash, because she'd never seen him give her a look like that. Now, though, she was as near to a full grown woman as she was ever likely to get.

"Unfortunately," she quipped self-deprecatingly, as she looked down at her chest. She had a _little_there to work with, at least enough that she didn't feel self-conscious about them, but compared to her sisters they were practically unnoticeable. She tugged at the straps of her one-piece to hike them up a bit, and turned side-ways to look at herself profile.

"Not half bad, though."

When she caught herself posing and making alluring faces in the mirror, imagining that it was Ash staring back at her with his mouth agape rather than her own reflection, she nearly socked herself in the chin. She settled with giving her cheek a few good smacks to rectify her thinking. Weren't cold showers supposed to clear your head of this sort of thing?

She snorted, and adjusted her stance into a more aggressive and far less feminine way of standing. Who gave a crap how Ash saw her? She was a gym-leader and a trainer, and if he wasn't careful, one day he'd wake up to find that she'd surpassed him as a battler, while he'd wasted his time ogling her body.

And that would be if she didn't punch his nose flat for him, first.

She shook her hair out and patted herself down with a towel, before throwing her jacket back on, then sliding her Expo cap down over it, still damp. She strode back into her office and paused at the phone, trying to make sure she was 100% done with her crazy thoughts before she stepped into that gym to take on her first challenger.

This was important stuff, after all. She had to be focused and in control for her Pokémon and for herself, not off in lah-lah land. Whether it was their new training, or their new outlook, her and her Pokémon were doing very well this past week. They hadn't lost a single match up, and she intended to keep that streak alive for as long as she could. It was good for her morale, and her Pokémon, to know that their efforts were paying off with real results, and she would do anything and everything to facilitate that, because she wanted more than anything for them to become the championship-caliber Pokémon she knew they could be.

She phoned reception, and asked Parker to send in the first challenger, then stepped out into the gymnasium. She strode poolside, and watched all her Pokémon waiting and preparing in their own ways, some casual, some serious. When they all noticed her, she pointed up towards the overhead display, where she'd cued up a simple display table for them all to see and remember.

A blue screen, split vertically. One side was headed "Losses", while the other side was headed "Wins." One read 0, the other, 15. She nodded at them, and they nodded at her, as she strode along, finger still aloft like a batter heading up to the plate, promising a home-run.

Ash did creep back into her thoughts for just a second, as she came to the podium. But it was only as she swiveled her cap around backwards, in preparation for her first victory of the day.

* * *

She had an awful nightmare that men had come for her in the night. Faceless shadows of men with iron claws. They broke into the house and dragged Riley and Deliah outside into the garden and burned them up, along with all the beautiful flowers, and one of them was trying to pull her out of bed by the back of her hair, just before she woke up.

It took her a few moments to remember where she was, to realize that she had just shrugged her covers up over her neck, and tangled her arms in them, and created tension enough to pin her head back and the man in her dreams was actually Riley, trying to rouse her.

"Did you not get enough sleep?" he asked, "You kept trying to shrug me off."

"I'm fine," she lied calmly, collecting herself. She sat up and massaged her eyelids. It was a futile effort.

When she was done rubbing at them, she found him still standing there and the side of the bunk, at eye-level. It seemed like he was inspecting her. All at once, he asked. "Will you teach me how to see people, like you do?"

She blinked, taken aback.

"I only ask because..." He paused, looking very concerned. "Well, I had a dream last night, and I remembered how you asked me if I could do it. If, you know, my gift allowed me to see." He stammered in the midst of his explanation. "I-In my dream, I was standing near a man, a tall man with slicked-back hair. He seemed nice enough...Only, I didn't see what he was, not on the inside. So, I ignored him, and in the end, he destroyed us. I don't know what he did, or how he did it, but it meant the end of the Guardians. That's why, if I can learn, I _should_learn."

Anabel cleared her throat. "I'll try." She frowned; realizing that she'd just lied to him about being fine. She needed some time to square herself away, to box up all the fears that'd come loose in the night, and hide them away deeper than he would be able to see. "A-after Breakfast."

He nodded, and stepped out. She took a few more moments to yawn and stretch and put her mind in the right place, then kicked off the top bunk and landed gently beside the bed. Sure enough, there were her clothes, laundered and ironed. What was more, it looked as though her clogs had been polished and a small tear at the cuff of her sleeve had been rather keenly repaired with hand-sewn stitches. Evidently Deliah had spent quite a bit of time on these.

She thanked her for it, the moment she had descended the stairs, but Deliah only smiled and waved her away with the spoon she was using to stir oatmeal. "It was nothing."

If it was nothing, though, breakfast was definitely something. The full spread was oatmeal, and cornmeal muffins, both with fresh blueberries from the garden, eggs made five different ways—over easy, scrambled with crumbled cheese, hard and soft-boiled, poached or sunny side up—along with fried potatoes, fried steak, (which Riley had never even heard of having for breakfast, though Deliah assured them it was quite common around these parts) fried mush, two different kinds of split sausage, waffles with crocs of maple syrup and butter, and thick-cut bacon still sizzling on the platter. There were wedges of grapefruit, slices of salted tomato, the lightest, feathery-soft crepes that Anabel had ever seen, and to top it all off, fresh-squeezed orange juice, steaming-hot coffee and ice-cold milk.

Deliah sat down first, looking like she'd be quite upset if they didn't eat their fill, which made both of them sit and clamber to fill their plates, although Riley didn't look like he knew what to do with himself, with so much food in front of him. Anabel took as much as she dared—or at least as much as she knew she could finish—while Riley, quite in spite of himself it seemed, piled food onto his plate with a look half made up of guilty satisfaction, and half of impending remorse.

Once they had filled their plates, Deliah asked Riley if he wanted to say grace, which he politely-if a bit alarmed, since he already had the fork halfway to his face—declined. "If you would, that would be more proper. It is your table, after all," he managed, after a moment of embarrassment, saving Deliah the need to turn to Anabel.

In an effort to not look disrespectful, she bowed her head as Deliah spoke softly. "Bless this food to our use, and us to thy service, O Arceus. We ask that you give us grateful hearts, for all thy mercies and gifts, and make us mindful of the needs of others. Amen."

When Anabel looked up again, Riley already had a mouthful of fried potato and a hard-boiled egg on the end of his fork. She dug into her own plate and found everything to be just as good as it looked, which was to say exquisite, and she, unlike Riley who was obviously having a revelatory experience, had never lacked for comforts.

"This is the best thing I've ever tasted," Riley said, in a voice that was practically a moan, as he sat there on the verge of tears. "What is this again?"

Deliah laughed. "It's just pan-fried steak."

"Yeah, but what did you _do _to it to make it so good."

It made her laugh all the harder. "I fried it. In a pan, if you can believe that."

He seemed like he couldn't.

The crepes proved to be not only the most beautiful looking, but also the most rich she'd ever had. The things were practically spun sugar in and of themselves and the honey and nutmeg crème folded into the middle just made them all the more sweet. Deliah herself seemed to have a little of everything, but mostly broke her fast on their complements.

When they were done, she whisked it all away like it had never been there (even though they hadn't even eaten half of it) scraped the leftovers into tupperware, then Mr. Mime slid the containers into the fridge while she put the dishes into the dishwasher, and finally took a towel to the table, smiling all the while. They offered to help, though she was mostly done by the time they managed to offer, and she flatly refused them regardless. She wouldn't have them raising a finger while they were here, and though they could both tell that it pleased her just to see them so satisfied by her cooking, they thanked her for the meal all the same.

It was not long after that Riley's Pidgey came pecking at the back window and alerted them all that their boat was due to arrive any minute. They made to thank Deliah again for her hospitality and to wish her farewell, but then suddenly she was right there behind them, stripping off her apron and hiking on a pair of beach-shoes. Without asking any questions, she ushered them on, clutching a cup of coffee out into the morning cold.

The walk to the shore was a winding one that took them past row after row of country houses at first, and then eventually the dirt road dithered down to a wooded footpath that cut back and forth across a descending bluff. It let them out onto a stony shore that seemed to stretch out into leagues of slate-gray sea. A white wooden rowboat that seemed like it was lost in the vastness paddled to short. It was too far away to see who was rowing it.

"I'll try and show you how to see, now." Anabel said, as the three of them stood there, waiting.

"Now?" Riley asked. "We'll have plenty of time on the boat."

Anabel just shook her head. "It shouldn't take that long. We'll know right away, if you can do it or not. Tell me what I'm feeling, right now."

Riley seemed puzzled at first, but then turned to face her. "Alright, then." He took two short steps toward her, but then he came up short, clasping his own thumb. He gave an embarrassed glance towards Deliah. "So do I, um." He cleared his throat. "Need to touch your, uh..."

Normally, she wouldn't have even thought about it, but Riley's embarrassment over it made her uncomfortable as well, so she just snatched his hand and laid it flat against her breast, and tried not to glare into his eyes, as they drew together.

His hand was huge, and it made hers feel tiny by comparison as she grasped his fingers. His palm was warm, and a little hard, but not clammy or sweaty at all, in spite of his apparent concern. Safety was what that huge hand felt like, which she supposed was appropriate, given that he was a Guardian. "Touching the heart can sometimes be the easiest way, but the secret is in the eyes, Riley. That's where everyone shows their true heart. Any man can lie to you with his words and his actions, but few can lie with their eyes."

Riley looked like he was concentrating, which was wrong, right of the bat. She reached out and cupped his elbow. "Don't think. Feel. Seeing the heart isn't about analysis, it's about empathy. If you can feel as they feel, in at least some small way, their heart will be reflected in your own."

Riley nodded, even though she could tell he felt her instruction was vague. He did give it his level best, though, and changed the way he was looking at her. His gaze seemed to shift more from one that was trying to find something evidential within her eyes, to one that was simply searching.

"Look at me, and see what my heart tells you, Riley. Throw away expectations. Deny the perception I've shown you, and look at what I'm telling you with my eyes," she encouraged.

The brain spoke with the mouth. Aural proof could be colored by the heart, but was ultimately cold and calculated; a manufactured substitute. People rarely said what they truly meant, and even less often the things they felt. The body was somewhere between both spheres of influence. A person might betray a telling frown at something they professed to enjoy, or smile at another's misfortune that worked out in their favor, even when feigning sympathy. Even that was overwrought falsehood, more often than not. The eyes were where the heart spoke.

She laid herself forward, pressing his hand tightly to her chest and leaning against it, minimizing the physical distance between herself and his wide palm, even as she laid the emotion just at the surface of her heart, so that he could see it. She'd been thinking about it since yesterday, and now she screamed it with her eyes, and willed Riley to see it.

And he did. It made him sad, just like she knew it would, but he did see it. He saw that truth plain in her eyes; in just the same way she now saw the crushing defeat in his. She felt bad for it, but her heart did not waver.

"You're not coming with me," he said, declaring what she'd shown him, aloud.

She shook her head. "I can't join the Guardians, Riley," she confirmed for him, unapologetically. There was too much to sort out here, and it all had her name on it. She couldn't run away with Riley to Rota and let everyone believe she was dead, any more than she could refuse to do her part in helping Scott and the other Frontier Brains recover from the blow that had destroyed the Battle Tower. The Guardians could protect her, and would have, she did not doubt, but right now, what she needed most was the peace of mind she would find in facing this problem, in spite of her fears, instead of running in the face of it. "I've taught you how to do what you asked. I just can't offer more than that. Not right now."

Maybe there would be a day when she decided that the Aura Guardians and their castle in Rota were the right place for her. Maybe it wouldn't be that far off, either, but today, and tomorrow and all the other days ahead of it, until she found the answers she needed, and the security she would gain in finding them, her place was and would be here, in Kanto.

Riley heaved up a breath, as Anabel let go of his hand. It was yet another failure and one that the Guardians could ill afford. In a brief passing moment, the thought he would just take her away, regardless—that he would do whatever he had to do in order to get her onto that boat and back to Rota, just as he should've done with Ash-was all that occupied his mind...but in the end, he knew that was foolish. He closed his eyes, and turned aside, remembering what she'd said about the truth of a person showing in their gaze. He could no more bring himself to kidnap Anabel than he had Ash. He had tried to recruit both of them. The Guardians now _needed_both of them, in a way they never had before. But Riley knew that he would have to report home a failure, yet again.

"What matters is that you're safe, I suppose." He said, unwilling to meet her eyes. Why couldn't his master have sent someone more personable? He didn't know how to be charismatic or delicate when things called for it. He'd always approached everything straightforward, headlong. He was one of life's doers. Not one of its talkers. That much, was now perfectly clear.

"Thank you so much, Riley." Anabel said, willing herself not to cry. She knew that if she cried, she'd get on that boat, resolve be damned, and so she buttoned it up tightly. Still, it hurt her to see Riley so suddenly miserable with himself, and be compromised from doing anything about it. Without Riley, she'd have faced a terrible fate without ever having seen it coming. "I won't forget about you. Or the Guardians. I promise."

He just couldn't bring himself to respond to that. At least not in any way he might've considered proper. He nodded slowly, and then rubbed a hand across his eyelids and down the side of his face, as though he were trying to relieve himself of a great weariness. When he opened them again, she saw that a steeliness had crept into his gaze. More a hardening over, like a scab, than of new resolve. "The Guardians forget no one," he said softly but with tones that tasted of duty, rather than friendship. "If you need us again, we'll be there."

And then, just as abruptly as he'd come into her life, he stepped out of it. With a bow, he swept off his hat, took Deliah's extended hand, and instead of shaking it as they'd both expected, he kissed the back of it like royalty. Then, he sloshed out into the surf without a word of farewell, and climbed into the boat alongside a teal-haired man, whom she realized at this distance, was oddly well dressed for the task, once he was in range.

They rowed away, and Riley did not look back. "Goodbye, Riley," she said quietly, to herself.

Anabel felt like they stood there on the shore for a long time, watching Riley disappear out to sea. When Deliah finally spoke, they were only a whitish speck near the edge of her vision, almost lost in all the gray. "Why didn't you go with him?"

Anabel felt tears brim in her eyes. She wondered if maybe it wasn't because she was a coward. Wasn't this the brave thing to do? She had to believe that it was. "He has his task, and I have mine."

"No offense, but I'd have gotten on the boat." Deliah said, taking a healthy sip of her coffee, which Anabel could smell that same woody scent of bourbon on, alongside cream and sugar. She gave a wistful, almost absent sigh, "They really don't make them like that one anymore, honey."

For a moment, it seemed like even nature itself hushed in response to that, and Anabel felt her gaze slowly creep over toward the woman. It was painfully obvious that Riley's gallantry had blown her over backwards. She blushed like a maiden when she felt Anabel's eyes on her, though, and pawed at her own cheek in embarrassment, before glaring down into her cup accusingly. "I don't know why I said that, I-I..." She huffed.

Her face perked, then saddened, then evened out, curling one arm around her midsection as though hugging herself. To Anabel it seemed like a strange display of emotion, until she realized that Deliah was reliving a memory. "I miss my husband," she said, sounding far away.

If anything, the excuse for her moment of feminine hormones only seemed to embarrass her more, when she snapped to, again. She extended her hand out to the side and poured out the cup into the stony sand, and said no more, her face as red as a tomatoberry.

Anabel didn't antagonize her by laughing, and they worked their way back to the Ketchum residence in silence, each more than willing to give forbearance to the other. It wore off by the time they made it back, though, and once they'd stepped back into the kitchen, Deliah was happy to speak to her again. "So what will you do now? You're welcome to stay here as long as you like. I'm always happy to have guests." Her voice almost sounded pleading, but Anabel had to shake her head.

"I should get in touch with Scott. I need to be getting back to work, not relaxing."

She was surprised at how structured and accepting Deliah's nod was, after she'd said it. The practiced incline and decline of her head. The stalwart acceptance printed all over her face. Almost real, she was sure anyone but her would've bought it. But there was that sadness in her eyes. That weary sense of singular loneliness that only an empty house could put on a person. The woman did smile, though, pleasant, despite her disappointment. "Well, you're welcome to return, then. Any time."

"It's been a pleasure," Anabel assured her. She reached out to shake the woman's hand.

Deliah looked at her curiously, though, hesitating from the maneuver. "Can I ask you; what was it that you and Riley did there, on the beach?"

Anabel thought about it. She had no reason to lie to the woman and to be honest; she was more than interested in the idea of looking within Deliah to see what she could. Still, it did seem a little embarrassing to admit it out loud. Deliah had remained silent for the whole thing, and Anabel had nearly forgotten she'd been there for it. "I was showing him, how to..."

She cleared her throat, and fumbled for the words she would use. "H-How to see the feelings of a person, without them saying them."

Deliah didn't skip a beat. "Before you go, can you show _me_?"

She was caught off guard for a moment, wondering why Deliah would want to know something like that. Would she try to look into Ash's heart, to try and help him get past his confusion and conflict? She didn't suppose it mattered. "I can try."

Deliah took her hand, that she had been holding out to shake, and pressed it unashamedly against her chest, and then offered up her own, likewise.

"You first. I want to watch how you do it." Deliah explained.

Anabel wasn't sure that would help, but she obliged anyways. She looked up into Deliah's honey-brown eyes, and from there, even deeper.

There were fires in her heart, that whickered and spat, and yearned for fuel to keep them burning.

The hearth fires that warmed the place where she held the memories of her only child, the fires of the wood stove where she prepared the meals that went uneaten, the torch she carried for her first and only love. A hundred candles, each for a person she knew and cared about, each a vigil, for their safe return.

There were new ones, fresh ones, even one for Anabel herself, but some of them were old, spent stumps of blackened wick with no wax left to melt. They'd burned so long now on nothing at all, but she kept them burning still, in a way that seemed impossible.

She loved so intensely and so resolutely that the flames kept burning-burning so high and hot that sometimes that they scorched her. Poor Deliah had nothing left to feed some of them, it seemed, but still she fed them anyways, whether from a photograph or a phone-call or from the bottle, but she did her best to feed them any way she could, because when she could not, they licked away at her and burned her up inside to keep on going.

She was a stubborn woman, though, and no matter how much they burned her, she wouldn't let any of them gutter out, not for an instant.

She must've gasped and recoiled when she let go, because Deliah was holding her elbow, with a concerned look on her face. "Are you alright?" she asked.

Anabel found herself choked up, when she looked back at her. "Are _you_?"

Deliah's expression became hard for just a moment, but then softened as quickly, before looking as though she were slightly ashamed of herself. She did nod with solemnity, though. "Mother of a Trainer. Wife of a Trainer. What can you do?" She answered very, very quietly.

Anabel didn't suppose that had an answer, really. At least, not one that Deliah hadn't mulled over a million times. She took a moment to compose herself, wiping at the corners of her eyes. She didn't have to ask Deliah if that was hard. She knew what it was to want something that you couldn't reach, even if hers was less a matter of obligation and more of elevation.

"Your turn," she finally managed to say, after adjusting her eyes again to look the woman in the face. Deliah had gardener's hands as she might've expected, though she was a little disappointed there were no green thumbs. Her digits were strong, and her nails surprisingly free of soil, though they were clipped short, she guessed, for just that reason. The lingering smell of coffee would've almost let her believe they felt earthen against her if she closed her eyes, but she kept them open. She tried to show Deliah something obvious, and kind—for that was what the woman deserved, after all—and so she laid all her thankful feelings to bear, her admiration for Deliah, and she tried to make them as plain to see as the shirt on her back.

Deliah looked into her eyes.

And then...

She kept looking. And looking. And looking...

"I see..." Deliah began, "A boy with dark hair. Brown—no—black. Black hair. And, he's saying goodbye to you... You're very sad, but he doesn't know it, and you...you can't tell him. He tries to see, but he can't... And he leaves you standing there...your heart beating faster...and faster..."

Anabel's heart really was beating faster. Beating so hard she thought it might break out through her chest and fly into Deliah's hand. Was she seeing Anabel's memory of Ash? The time she'd looked into her son's heart? Anabel hadn't meant for her to see that deep! How had the woman gotten so easily through?

"You're in love! Madly! Desperately! You want to run to him, to pull him back to you, but you can't! ...all you can do is call his name into the wind..."

Her face was on fire, and she felt flushed down to her stomach, not even caring how Deliah knew. It was true, it was all true! She felt her mouth form around the name, remembering it just as she was describing. Her lips stuck wide, as if in a gasp. _Ash_, she wanted to say, even then, _Ash!_

Deliah whipped both her hands back and clasped them together under her chin, like she was overcome with just how adorable the idea was. "Goodbye, Riley! Goodbye, my true love!"

Anabel was so staggered by exasperation that she face-faulted onto the tile.

Deliah looked down at her, blinking. "Did I get it wrong?"

Anabel wanted to shout back, but she didn't know whether to scream yes or no, so she held her tongue. Something mischievous in Deliah's expression told her that the denial was unnecessary. Deliah hadn't seen anything but her eyes, and they both knew it. "I don't think you've got the gift," Anabel finally managed.

Deliah shrugged, unbothered by the revelation. "You should have more faith in an older woman's insight." She laughed, though, to let Anabel know she was teasing her.

Anabel left the Ketchum Residence with a smile on her face, just as she was sure Deliah had intended. Rather than shake her hand, Mrs. Ketchum had given her a massive hug and refused to let her leave without taking a knapsack filled with leftovers from their breakfast.

There was so much of it that she let her Pokémon out to share brunch with her on the side of Route 1, on the back of a folded picnic cloth Deliah had included. Her Snorlax ended up finishing of most of it, and she was still stuffed from just what she'd had. She let herself doze for a while, resting against Metagross' enormous hull, watching Espeon's split tail coil gracefully, and Alakazam in his recumbent meditation. After a half-hour of that, though, she gave it up. Regardless of how nice it was, it made her feel guilty. She was enjoying herself while everyone thought she was dead or worse.

"The tower is gone," she said to remind herself, realizing that it was the first time she'd said it in front of her Pokémon, only after she'd spoken..

She looked into their eyes as they turned to face her. She wasn't surprised at their confusion, but it somehow shocked her. What was life like on the inside of a poke ball? Did they lead separate lives, while they were inside? What was it like to see the world outside in disassociated chunks? The sudden thought of it made her feel guilty. "The Battle Tower is gone."

For a long stretch, the Battle Tower had been her life. It wasn't that she'd been particularly passionate about her career, or anything. She'd just been good. Insights like hers gave a person an unbelievable edge in battle. Still, she' probably never would have amounted to anything if Scott hadn't seen that in her. She'd thrown herself at the occupation with the alternative being, well, little to nothing.

Honestly, she'd enjoyed it more than she might've thought. Though she was native to the city of Goldenrod, and its modernity, she was still by nature, a recluse—a shut-in, one might've said. Always indoors, never going out for much and preferring, for the most part, her solitude, save for the company she found in Pokémon. Scott had seen to that too, which was why the Battle Tower had been built at the remote Tojou Falls location. It had seemed entirely incongruous with its surroundings, with its palatial glass facade, and its skyscraper silhouette, but it had suited her, just as Scott said it would.

And now it was gone. Scott deserved to hear that _she _still remained, at the very least. Without Scott, her career might never have gone anywhere, and she'd be just another struggling trainer, and the destruction of the Battle Tower would just be some other piece of bad news on the television. As it was, she was a seventeen year old battling prodigy, and her entire life had gone up in smoke. For good or bad, she owed it all to Scott, so she had to get back to Viridian, and get in touch with him.

She owed him at least that much.

* * *

"Alder was unable to attend," The tall, dark-haired man explained, nodding softly as though he were affirming that he'd spoken the words correctly.

"Unsurprising," Cynthia said. "He hasn't been to any league function in years. Why should the man start just because there's an official directive?" she asked in a huff.

"Alder has lost his passion, since the incident with his starter Pokémon, Shirona-sama." Grimsley further elucidated, evidently feeling that it was his duty, though Cynthia thought it more likely that he was the only one of the Unovan elite that spoke a lick of Kantonese. Knowing that, she let the corruption of her name go.

The Unovan language relied on tonal differentiation to create linguistic variety, rather than syllabic, so most Unovans seemed to lack practice with the proper sounds to form her name is it was written, particularly the "th"-sound. The expected honorific was there, at least, so she didn't let it bother her. After all, Shirona wasn't so bad of an alteration compared to the three-syllable word that was as close to Lance's actual name as they could manage, complete with the vestigial "ru"-sound at the end, and if anything the way they addressed Wallace was even more mangled.

"I had hoped that he would come around." Charles Goodshow said, careful to annunciate well for the sake of their overseas counterparts. "These are grave times we find ourselves in, and we must consolidate and solidify, for the sake of our continued prosperity."

"We understand," Grimsley offered, with a nod, though the other three did look quite displeased.

"I would ask that you put forth the name of a new champion to assume the title Alder has abdicated," Charles requested. "It is a hard thing to do, but there is some precedent for it."

Cynthia glanced around the room, as the four Unovan elites consorted with one another. The meeting hall of Indigo League Headquarters was stuffed to the brim. Each Champion, save Alder, was seated near her, down the north head of the table, which should have seated five, Wallace, Lance, and herself, along with Charles and the absentee champion. To either side of the table, were eight seats for the sixteen elites that helped protect their respective Champion's title.

Lorelei, Agatha, Bruno, and Koga for Lance. Sidney, Phoebe, Glacia, and Drake for Wallace. Her own elites; trainers she had hand-picked for the job: Aaron, Bertha, Flint, and Lucian, along with the four who'd came to represent Alder, all of whom had names and demeanors that were somewhat more flashy than their counterparts. Shauntal, Marshal, Grimsley, and Caitlin were obviously potent battlers; however, as Alder himself had once had quite the reputation.

The years could do a lot to a man, though, obviously. Still, she could forgive the pomp, as she regarded them. Anything that drew eyes to the league was good, and so long as their garb and demeanor was not considered foolish in their homeland of Unova, then it was no concern of hers. There was something _stylish_about them, even if it was slightly obtuse by her eyes. She would have to visit Unova, she decided. Perhaps someday soon.

Further to the opposite end of the table, were notable leaders, as well. Blaine and Surge, from here, Pryce and Lance's cousin, Claire from neighboring Johto. Winona and Norman from Hoenn, and two leaders from her own Sinnoh, Volkner and Fantina, whom she knew would represent well. The two leaders from Unova seemed curious choices, though. Both relatively young, one of them a well-dressed and very crisp looking man with dark-blue hair. Cheren, she realized, recognizing his face from all those news-interviews, years ago. He still looked somehow troubled-drained even-by what had happened to his childhood friend. Not in his demeanor, but in his eyes.

She felt a twinge of anger for Alder, at that moment. This boy had lost someone dear to him, horrifically, and still carried on with his life. Champions were supposed to set the example for other trainers, yet Alder could not work past his own loss, however minor it might've been by comparison! It was a passing thing, though. She had never known loss in the same way as either of them, and so she could not rightly say what she might've done.

The other leader was even younger, maybe only thirteen or so, if that. To Cynthia, she looked like she was drowning in the room, so much larger of presence was everyone else, but if the girl noticed it at all, she did not seem so behave as such. She was talking animatedly to Claire, and she supposed that was an indication that one of the two of them was bilingual, at least.

A change came over the room, then, when Grimsley spoke up again. The girl who'd seemed so minor by comparison, suddenly became the largest thing in it, when she was pointed out by the Unovan elites. "We choose to nominate Iris, as the Unova League Champion."

Everything in the room fell quiet. For a long second, nobody even breathed, as they waited to see what the reaction would be.

"That's a very large responsibility for such a little girl," Pryce was the first to offer, as if consoling Iris for impending rejection.

Roars of countermand and opposition came from all sides, then, some even demanding to know if this was some sort of joke, but to her credit, Iris seemed to notice not a word of it. Eventually, the entire clamor died down; when everyone yelling realized that they had no say in the matter. The nomination had been made. It was up to the three of them- the Champions, to shape policy of the league. From there, only Charles could overturn the decision, though he rarely did such things.

There was every likelihood that the Unovan Elites had only made the suggestion to mock them for suggesting a replacement in the first place. There was a lot of latitude for misinterpretation between their languages, but Unovans were prone to do that sort of thing. Culturally, they were a very prideful people. Still, due process and good manners dictated that they at least pretend that the matter at hand was serious, even if it turned out not to be.

As the least senior of them, they differed to Wallace to make the first pronouncement. All eyes focused on the be-caped man, as he sat forward in his seat.

"With the, ah..." Wallace began, but paused to carefully choose his words since Charles had forbidden them from using the world 'Attack' or anything similar, "Incident, looming so heavily over our heads, people will be looking for a clear representation that the League is making sound, and advantageous decisions regarding the positioning of its assets.

"If something such as this could happen to the Battle Frontier, than it could most certainly happen to the League. As such, we should be expected to use what are ostensibly the best candidates for what are ostensibly the best reasons. This will help us to appear both unshaken by recent events, and furthermore, ready to deal with such, should it befall us.

"Iris is, from what I have heard, is an excellent leader, and of good stock as a battler, as well. However, the fact remains that she is a twelve-year old girl without any apparent qualifications for the job, and so I cannot rightly say that this should appear to be a sound or advantageous decision on the League's part. As such, it is with regret that I reject this proposal, as put forth by our esteemed colleagues." Wallace concluded, with true disappointment in his eyes. As befitting a Champion, Wallace was graceful and elegant in all things, even dissent.

Lance spoke next. "I disagree, completely," he said, drawing some surprise, even from his own constituents. "I think that this could be just what the league needs right now. Historically, league tournament attendance has hit all-time highs in the seasons following the crowning of a new Champion, and even with that aside, recent polls show that the average trainer is between the ages of eleven and sixteen.

"I can address that in two different analytical lights- Either you outright accept it as raw data, and you see plainly that the vast majority of league support in both licensing, and in turnout comes from people at or near Iris' age, or you can look a bit more intensely at those numbers and ask yourself why such statistics exist.

"According to a study done last year conducted amongst licensees having held their license for ten years or more, your average training career lasts only _six_years. In that space of time, 76% of trainers, experiencing no significant success, move into other fields and that rate increases by another one point five percent, annually. Right now, we have a chance to appoint a person that could dramatically change the way young people see their chances of attaining their dreams. All of us sitting here currently, started with ambitions that became life-long careers, and if it were possible, I know that all of us would want every trainer to know the satisfaction that comes from a long and fulfilling tenure in the League. The best we can do-what we must be expected to do, as the caretakers of this league and enterprise- is everything in our power to continue to foster that desire, and help to refuel the passions of these disillusioned trainers. So, in doing that, I must contribute my own support to this proposal. I think Iris would make an excellent Champion."

So then it was up to her, as a tie-breaker. Honestly, she hadn't expected that from Lance, and she was among the more surprised when he'd said it. To her, Wallace's explanation had sounded level-headed and sensible. There was a lot of risk in just_ putting _that much power into the hands of someone so young. She wouldn't be the youngest champion ever, but it was different if you earned it, at that age; a prodigy wouldn't necessarily have all the social airs that a Champion needed to have, but at least they would have the true battling skill required.

Red had been that way. He wasn't much in the way of a league figure, or social magnate but he'd always been a hellatious battler. Nobody had _ever_beaten him since the day he'd picked up a poke ball. Top down, the kid had been a miracle on the battlefield, and Cynthia didn't think she'd ever seen his like, or would ever again. Though, they did say that the brightest stars burnt out the quickest, so perhaps that was the reason his career had ended so early.

Cynthia thought it over. She herself had been the first female champion in league history. Before her, Agatha had come close, winning a regional tournament once or twice, but Agatha had never managed to claim the title from her contemporary. She was the only woman who'd ever defeated the elite four and toppled the Champion before her to win the title and she'd done it almost ten years ago, when she was Lance's age. She was the last person of either gender to do it in that fashion. She was thirty-six now, and while she did not feel like a relic, it was hard not to see herself as the product of a bygone era.

If she allowed this young girl to become a Champion, she would become the only remaining Champion who had not been appointed to their position. Wallace had taken up the title when Steven had given it up, and Red had likewise given his up to Lance. Alder had abandoned his own, and should she say yes, his would pass on to Iris.

She tried to leave her emotions out of it. Champion's weren't supposed to let their feelings get in the way of what was good for the sport, but she just couldn't help but feel that she'd been cheated. _If only I'd have waited a few more years, someone would've just given me the title, and I wouldn't have to of put all that hard work into it. _It didn't feel like it was fair that someone was allowed to join her on the hilltop she'd worked her entire childhood and young adulthood away trying to climb up to, with just a few strokes of the pen.

But that was just the way it was. Working your way to an elite-four challenge was something only just a few trainers a year could manage, by design. From there it was essentially a five-on-one for the title, so in a very real sense, you had to be five times better than the champion before you. It stood to reason that the human capacity for talent could only stretch so far when taken in such exponential leaps.

Was she only being judgmental? A part of her resented Lance, though Wallace was really no different. Wallace may have battled his way through the elite four and defeated Steven in a special out-of-season exhibition match set by the league, but everyone knew that Steven practically threw it to him, offering up disadvantageous Pokémon time and time again during the competition. Steven had _wanted _to retire, after all. He hadn't been cut out for the job, by his own proclamation. Lance, though he'd actually helped defend Red's title for a few years before taking many unsuccessful cracks at it, had been handed the title as a matter of course by Charles and the other incumbent champions. Only she had voted against it.

She resisted putting a hand up to her face to rub at it. Champions shouldn't allow themselves to show the same outward vexations as other trainers. She agreed with Wallace, because he was right, and she agreed with Lance, because what he said were the sort of words a true champion would've said, regardless of what the orthodox decision actually was. In the end, it came down to her, though. She could either pass the motion along and feel good having known that she'd helped boost the career of another woman like herself, so underestimated in this sport, as well as given a popularity boon to the league in general or strike it down, here and now, and know that she'd protected the league from possible trouble, and scrutiny, while likewise standing up for her own accomplishments.

One answer for the league, one answer for her integrity.

One answer for the sport, one answer for its competitors.

One for the future of the league, and one for its history.

"Like almost all the rest of us, I began my career when I was ten. Since then, I have given everything I have to it. It took me sixteen years of effort to become a champion, so if what Lance says is true, then I am one of the rare few who persevered. I know that to be a real Champion, you must pour your blood, sweat and tears out for all to see, day by day, drop by drop, for howsoever long it takes. If it takes your whole life, you _must_ do this. There is no other way. Hard work, Dedication, and Sacrifice are the _only_ things that will make a Champion. We cannot simply make you a Champion by _calling _you one.

"I will add my support to this proposal, so long as you understand that."

Iris hardened her gaze, and nodded once, very slowly. The ascent was solemn. "I hope to one day be your equal Cynthia-san," she admitted, granting her the honorific of a senior peer.

Cynthia looked to Goodshow, who made the pronouncement, without as much as a batted eyelash. "Today you assume the titles and duties of Unovan Champion, and will carry them out from this day, until you are defeated. In addition, you will be expected to defend your title when it is called upon and you may select any four trainers you please to server as your Elite Four."

"The Four Heavenly Kings of Unova will remain as they are," she said, using the Unovan nomenclature for the position. It was a wise and prudent move. It would instantly seal the loyalty from all four of them, if their nomination hadn't been unanimous already, and it would undoubtedly prove effective. For all their flash and debonair, they were the most singularly effective Elite team in the world. Nobody had successfully challenged Alder directly since Hilda, and that had been ten years or more ago, while she'd had to fend off a title-attempt just this past month.

The matter concluded, Charles dismissed the Unovans, assuring Iris that he would meet with her in the next few days to make an official press announcement. Cynthia could not help but feel a certain bitterness rise within her, over that. _So this is how Champions are made, now. Not on battlefields, but in conference rooms._

She put that feeling aside as the room consolidated a bit. They'd decided not to talk too forthrightly about the recent destruction of the Battle Tower, particularly not in their suspicions involving who exactly was behind it. To the Unovans, the PLF, or rather Team Plasma, which had come before it, were something of a national pariah, and the mark the group had left on their country was a wound that would not tolerate much prodding before it bled. Once they had all filed out, though, the mood in the room seemed to change into something darker.

She wondered just when they'd all become this politburo, this engine of posture and control. It had probably happened sometime after Red's reign had ended, she decided. He'd have never stood for this sort of thing, youngest of them, or not. Still, it had become necessary, at some point over the course of the years. There were so many things you couldn't say or couldn't do, and the idea of a Champion that couldn't be cowed into remaining silent had died along with Red. Lance was as close to it came, and still, he seemed at times more of a political monster than she was.

There was a bit of chatter over the decision, and over the event that had inspired it, but it died away quickly, when Charles spoke again, steering the meeting down a different course. "This _is _an auspicious event, I agree, but it is truly going to be the beginning of an auspicious day. I think that Lance has the right idea when it comes to the league, and I have thought this for a very long time now. There will be rolling reforms across the board, but I want to get started by making a few of the more pressing policy changes.

"I've spoken with the accounting department over the past months, and in an effort to open new positions for a younger and more diverse array of trainers and gym-leaders, the league will be offering incentivized retirement benefits in excess of five times the normal sums, to those who qualify, as well as certain other forms of monetary bonuses to those who wish to apply for early retirement."

There was a murmur that rose up, but ever the efficient demagogue, Charles snuffed it out. "Let me just say, before I go on, that nobody is being forced into retirement. We simply want to make that option more viable and appealing to those that might desire such a thing.

"I also want to address the fact that some of you take it upon yourselves to do other community services and programs outside of your league-appointed positions, such as Surge, with his Pokémon Corps training program, and you, Bruno, with your bi-annual self-defense seminars, and the Pokémon Therapy school you run. As an enterprise, we want to acknowledge these programs as helpful to the community, and to the League as a whole. You help to build a positive image, both in the public light and in the lives of trainers.

"We wish to work with you, in order to help expand these programs, if not directly sponsor them, whether that might mean offering you the opportunity to do them full-time as League paid consultants and contractors, or simply easing the financial and personnel burden.

"In short, the crowning of a new champion will only be the beginning of a major renewal and expansion, and that starts today."

"I know that there have been murmurs to the effect that the PLF was behind an attack here in mainland Kanto. As of now we have no evidence to substantiate this, but I will be truthful with you: It is a possibility. We know that this event concerning the Battle Tower was no accident, regardless of what you might hear on the news in coming days.

"We must be mindful not to cause needless panic by jumping to wild conclusions, however, and I would advise all of you not to spread around rumors. I cannot emphasize enough how little good that will do anyone, and that it could ultimately be of great detriment to the league. I would recommend each and every one of you, be watchful. The League is here to support everyone, and will do the best that it can for any of you. The damage has already been done to the Battle Frontier, and I will be working with Scott to mitigate the fallout over this. Yes, it will involve a cover-story, and yes, I will expect all of you to stick to it. I'm not foolish enough to patronize any of you, however, and I want to make sure that we all understand one thing: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

"The new directive of consolidation and re-structuring will have a foremost focus on added security-for all of us. Together we are strong, and the closer to each other we stand, the stronger we will become. This may mean keeping secrets from the general public as we work closer to a resolution to these suspicions, and the ultimate conclusion of this PLF scare, and it may also mean some of us will be called upon to give deliberate misinformation to avoid ugly press coverage or to maintain a level of calm.

"I won't ask anyone who is not comfortable with that to do so, and I do not intend to force anyone out who isn't, but I must ask all of you to understand that the league will do as it must to protect itself from any threat, real or imagined, and this is the best way that I, as a leader, know how to do that. The Unovans will not resurrect the issue of the PLF if there is any way at all to avoid it, but I know that some of you have been very outspoken on the matter in the past. I have to ask that we do our best in the coming months, not to draw any more attention to the issue than there already will be."

Surge, towards the end of the table, raised his hand. Charles acknowledged him with a nod. "I've put on Corps Training Camps for three years now, whenever I have time in the early off-season, as you're well aware, sir."

"Yes."

"I run the camp as a general preparedness drill to make young people aware of the fact that one day, there may very well be a real threat on the mainland, PLF or otherwise, and what that might mean for them."

"As you should."

"Well, forgive me, sir, but am I to assume that I should henceforth tell them that there is no PLF, and that they're working themselves to the bone to defend their homes against bogey-men?"

"A good question, and one without a very definitive answer, I'm afraid" Charles explained, folding his fingers in concern. "I think that as the man on the ground, in this situation, I must differ to your experience. I will not interfere insofar as how you run your course, Lieutenant. As I said before: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The more people who are ready, and prepared for such an event, the better our response will ultimately be, in the unlikely event of its actual occurrence-or recurrence, as the case may turn out. However, I don't believe it will do at all to needlessly whip your trainees into a sort of nationalist frenzy, so I must object if there proves to be anything provocative or influential to that effect. I trust there is not?"

"No, sir."

"Then my support of your program and my offer to sponsor and expand it remains open. Does that answer satisfy you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Does anyone have anything else they'd like to ask me?"

Nobody did.

"Well, then before we adjourn; there will be a press-release made later this afternoon, after I've had an opportunity to meet with Scott. I have to ask everyone not to discuss this with anyone outside of your own families, until the announcement has been made.

"Norman, I understand that you have a son and a daughter on the road, right now?"

"I do. May and Max, One in Johto, one in Sinnoh." the man said politely.

"If you'd like to get in touch with them, when you leave, I can have my secretary get them on the videophone for you."

"I don't believe that's necessary. I'll discuss the matter with them later. They're in good hands for the time being."

"Well then, I believe that were done for the day. I'll be in touch with all of you presently, concerning what's been discussed here, and we'll discuss it in greater detail." Charles sat back from his the table, and stood, signaling an end to the meeting.

All the leaders and elites filed out, and Wallace lingered to say his farewells.

"Good seeing you all again, as always," the Hoenn Champ said, firmly gripping Charles' hand then Lance's; Hoenni accent flavoring his words.

"I heard you're making some appearances in non-regional tournaments this year," Mr. Goodshow commented, enthusiastically.

Wallace smiled a full, bright set of teeth. He had ever a handsome, charming man. "That's the hope. Part of an inter-regional outreach program I'm starting, back home."

"I wish you luck," Cynthia offered, as he shook hands with her as well. When all was said and done, Wallace bowed gracefully, and departed.

Lance and Cynthia turned to say their goodbyes, but Charles rounded on the both of them, and pointed to their seats. "I'd like the two of you to stay for this. There's something I wanted to discuss before we meet with Scott."

So her and Lance sat back down, and Charles took up his seat between them. She wondered what it was about, and suddenly she felt her guard fly up. Charles, with kind words and copious compensation had just very subtly and deftly made moves that would rid the league of its oldest generation. She did not doubt that quite a few younger trainers would take Charles up on his generous offer as well, as there were a good deal many trainers who had passions outside of battling, and would leap at the opportunity to keep their league paychecks, and move into new positions.

Was there an agenda here? Was this all just a ploy to push out the old breed, and make way for New blood? Was Charles pushing for more than just a renewal, but a total overhaul of league personnel? Were they going to ask _her_to step down? Would she be the last of her kind, rather than just the sole remainder? That became the question, then, didn't it?

Was she the newest of the old breed, or the oldest of the new?

She waited for the two of them to sit down, trying to let none of the wariness she felt, as they both turned to face her, show on her face. What Charles said next surprised her more than anything else she'd heard that day.

"Previous to this incident, I had planned to announce my own retirement," Charles said, scratching the top of his bald head. "As it stands, with things so tense, that would be a very poor move on my part, so I will be delaying the announcement until the conclusion of the season here in Kanto, when things will have hopefully died down some."

She felt herself gawk in confusion, and made a concerted effort to stop it. Charles was an old man, but it had somehow seemed like he would never quit-that he would always be there as the League's benefactor. He was somewhat mythical in that regard, like a personal Santa Claus. For much longer than she'd been alive, Charles Goodshow had been the President of the Pokémon League, so it only seemed natural that he would continue to be, long after she was dead and gone. That was a ridiculous idea, of course, but was a hard thing to imagine the League without the man, so synonymous with it, was he.

"What? Why?" For the first time that day, she let her true feelings show on her face. A great amount of misgiving spilled out from her then, and she held up both her hands as is grasping for a reason. "Who could even replace you?"

To her even greater surprise and dismay, it was Lance who answered her. "I will be stepping out of my position as Champion at the end of the season, in order take over the presidency." He looked almost troubled by having to say it to her but he said it nonetheless, as he squared off with her over the table.

She flopped back into her seat, unable to really process the idea. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked, simply too stunned to understand why.

Charles spoke once more, reaching out and gently patting her hand as it hung lethargically from the end of the arm-rest. "You know, I've been very fortunate in my career. To have facilitated the quest to compete for the most illustrious battling title in the world, it really feels like something special! In my time, many Champions have risen to the pinnacle and fallen to the wayside. It's a drama I've watched unfold for fifty years now. I have had the privilege of knowing many of the greatest to ever hold the title. I count you among these, so don't doubt that for a second."

"But having watched all those, well, boys, some of them, but-men, if you'll forgive me that-all rise to the occasion, and having facilitated them, once they'd reached it, it has taught me that often those who have what is required to reach the top, lack what is required to stay there.

"I hate to say this, but you know as well as I do that it was more than likely the title itself that eventually drove Red to hermitage. He just couldn't handle it-and it wasn't because he was too young! We all know that Red could have out-battled any two of us at once if he had to. But he wasn't the sort that was made for being at the top. He was made for the _assent_. Unfortunately, he had no higher left to climb." Charles seemed to drift away from the conversation for a moment then, a bitter look on his face.

She'd won her title just a few months before Red, and had known him well. Everything was exactly as Charles had said, near as she could tell. For a year or so, everything had been okay, but then Red had just become so disillusioned with it all that he'd just seemed to fade away. First, he'd stopped showing up for public appearances, then he'd stopped showing up at all. The last anyone had ever heard of him, he was living up in the mountains, and that had been so long ago! A Champion at eleven; he'd have been twenty now, if he was still alive.

Honestly, she doubted anybody was nearly so baffled by it as Charles. It seemed like the man had done everything he possibly could have to keep Red engaged and occupied, but it had never been enough. Charles decision to appoint Lance to the position of Kanto-Johto Champion had come not a moment too soon, and it had avoided a major backlash in public opinion, but it had broken the old man's heart to give away Red's title.

Red had never been an incredibly popular champion, lacking the gravitas and charisma of his older counterparts and famous only for being so incredibly young, but she'd always gotten the impression that Charles had a soft spot for Red. Maybe that's why the abdication had hurt him so bad. In Charles' career there had been some notably poor Champions and there were certainly controversies in league history, no doubt, but nobody had ever walked away from the title before their time was up, until Red did it.

Now that seemed to be all that was happening! Steven had wanted out; Alder had gone the way of Red before him. She could see what Charles meant. His appointments had been counter-intuitive to the process, but ultimately, they had held the League together.

A siren was going off in the back of her mind, though. Charles hadn't really answered her question.

She felt her eyebrows slam together. "What does this have to do with me?"

"The league needs a younger, fresher generation of trainers, if not to bring in new ideas into the fray, then to at least renew the passion. Being static helps no one, and so we must do what we can to help facilitate the passing of the old, and the collection of the new. This is why I would promote Iris to Champion a hundred times, before I would let even one Red destroy himself. Surely you can understand that?"

Cynthia blinked, now starkly alarmed. There it was, out on the table. With Alder gone, she was the oldest remaining champion, in addition to being the sole legitimate heir. She truly was the youngest of the old, and not the oldest of the young. She could see that in their expressions, as Lance and Charles stared at her from across the table.

Well, she wasn't going to take it lying down. Her mind was already spinning along like an angry Whirlipede. Charles couldn't just dismiss her out of hand, not without some evidence of gross neglect, which he could never hope to produce. He would have to put her up against a challenger outside of season, if he wanted her gone any time before next year, and she dared him to try and find someone capable of doing it! Paul might've beaten his way through her Elites, but she doubted that he could've beaten her in a straight-six, even as hungry for it as he was. He was talented and driven, but he still had a lot to learn.

She sat higher in her chair. She could take this rebuke with dignity. She was the Sinnoh Champion, and the very last person left who still knew what that meant, _apparently_. If Charles wanted to see her gone, he was out of luck. She would outlast him, even if he didn't retire. She had another decade left in her reign, easy, whereas Charles would be lucky if he had another decade left outside a retirement home.

But then something cut that idea off at the knees. This was the same man who'd spent a year in Sinnoh at her behest! He'd even set up his offices there in order to more closely work alongside her. Sinnoh had been the first region to adopt the league's newest standards, and they'd worked together to make the rollout happen. Why would he have done any of that, if his agenda, all along, had been to replace her?

This couldn't possibly be about her. She thought about what Charles had said about Red.

She tried to remember what he own ascension had been like, but it was hard to remember now, in the way that emotional things were. It was the first and last time she'd lost face as Champion, though, and she still very much enjoyed the position. She built careers, shaped policy, and battled the best of the best. Was that not what Red had wanted? "Does victory really poison people in such a way?"

Charles sighed, that very old look returning to his face. "I don't know. Steven, Alder, and Red are all as different as people can be. They all came from different walks of life, from different regions, with wildly different approaches to the sport, but they all languished as Champions and I have to believe that they're happier without it. Probably would've been happier if they'd never gotten it. "

Cynthia wondered if Red had held some fantasy about what being a Champion would actually mean, that the true thing had not fulfilled. She wondered if maybe Charles was wrong about Red's incumbency. Perhaps he _had_been too young. What could it have hurt to bar him from the Elite Four Challenge, even if just for a few years? Red might've become the greatest Champion the League had ever known, but instead he'd achieved everything a trainer could ever hope to achieve in their entire career, two years into it and then fizzled out, anticlimactically.

She could see that it had more to do with the type of person you were on the inside, though. Someone her own age could've been just as disillusioned by it. What made a person that way, though? Red was definitely the type to grab for more. Not greedily, but just, as though he was starved to accomplish. Hurting to get ahold of more. The accolades, and the praises had just fallen into a bottomless pit though, and that hunger had never really been satisfied, even when there was nothing left for Red to seize with his own two hands. Perhaps, in some fundamentally flawed way, Red hadn't been able to deal with that and it had ultimately broken him. Then again, she thought, maybe the world was what was fundamentally flawed if such raw talent was doomed to undo itself in the end.

Either way, she felt like they were getting away from the point. "What is it that you wanted to tell me?"

Charles nodded a few times, evidently trying to pack all of his unraveled thoughts about Red into a tight little box. "Ask, is more like it."

"When you've had a career as long as mine and you've seen so many others end before your own, you come to understand that the thing people remember you for is how you finish. They don't care how you started, or how you got there. In the end only the things that you've actually accomplished matter. I've had to do a lot in the past ten years to keep the league standing, and I'm well aware that you haven't agreed with some of it.

"Now are the trying days, though. This next season will determine whether the things I have done have met the grade or not. Whether or not the PLF is a true threat, the mere social climate they will induce, simply as an idea, could potentially shake us to the foundations. I'd like to believe that the choices that I've made will be for the best, and give us the greatest chance of weathering the storm.

"Knowing that, I _have _to ask, do you believe in what I've done? I know that I have, over the years, insulted the integrity of what you've accomplished, by appointing Champions of my own."

She sucked in a breath, but Charles just kept right on rolling. "You don't have to act as though it never bothered you. I can see it on your face. Saw it today, in fact, though your decision surprised me a bit," he stopped to shake his head.

"I won't make light of the fact that I've all but slapped you in the face for being a legitimate Champion, by making you share the pedestal with people who haven't put in the time and effort that you have, but I promise that there will be no one in this room today whom Lance and I respect and admire more than you."

Lance nodded, sincere in his approbation. "It's true,"

"So I have to ask if you _truly _believe in what I have accomplished as President of the Pokémon League."

Cynthia bit her lip. Since everyone was being open and frank she figured she may as well be, too. Biting her lip was about all the more emotional that she ever got, though. A Champion had to have her reservation.

"Charles..."

Charles Goodshow had held them all together-all five regions-when they'd have otherwise fallen apart. He'd held them together during the Team Plasma bombings a decade ago, he'd held them together following Red's abdication, and he was still holding them together now. He was a father to them all, in a way. He was ever paternal; acting in their best interest, even when she objected.

Ultimately, she _had _to believe. The things that Charles had done, though some had rubbed her the wrong way, had led to greater prosperity and unity within in the league, and she could not begrudge or deny that.

"I do," she clasped her hand to his where he'd patted to console her nerves, returning the gesture with gusto.

"As do I," Lance agreed, as the aged president turned to him.

"Then I expect the two of you to work together to protect what I have built, as President, and the first Tri-Regional champion."

"Tri-Regional?" Cynthia barked.

Lance and Charles laughed, like it was a joke they'd planned together.

The other Champion explained it, though. "Mr. Goodshow was contacted by a spokesperson from the Orange League this morning."

There had always been a long-standing professional rivalry-nearly a grudge-between the Orange League and its incorporated counterparts, over the years. Early in the history of the League, they had resisted the idea of global unification, choosing to keep their independence, and preserve regulations of their own choosing, as opposed to adopting the standard Eight-Leader layout that every other national league had taken up, as well as several other unionized ideals.

It had cost them greatly in the end, because since then the Orange League had faded into some sort of strange hinterland organization with odd rules and customs that put off most professional-circuit trainers. With its silly Head Leader and lack of an Elite troupe, as well as only maintaining a roster of 4 true Gym-Leaders, the Orange League seemed like small potatoes in her mind. An abbreviated half-league, of sorts.

Though their Head Leader, whatever else she might've said of him, was undefeated in the last three years or more and had been up to that point for years previous, as well. That was without an Elite Four, too so it was really anyone's guess what the skill-level was like. Still, in any _real_league Drake would've been dispossessed of the title, and that was what counted. For him to still be seated as head leader went against everything her tenure as Champion stood for. Iris, Lance and Wallace might've been appointed their titles, but they still defended them, and were at risk of losing them every time they did so.

Drake had gotten a loss handed to him and though granted it was only just the one in his career that had lasted almost as long as her own, he still reined over the Orange League. She guessed that was why they'd never dared refer to their incumbent as a "Champion" but instead with that ridiculous "Head Leader" title.

"In light of the recent climate, they've finally decided to incorporate with the rest of the league. We're still deciding on a format, but we're entering talks now concerning a title unification bout, in order to standardize them with the rest of the Regions."

Charles smiled. "Lance and I decided that it would be best if you were to be the one to challenge Drake for the unified Orange League title, once all the details are settled. Winning would bring them fully on board, as well as make you a Bi-Regional champion."

"Following that, once Mr. Goodshow announces his retirement, and I take his place as President, at the end of this season, I will announce you as heir combatant to my title, as well. Provided that nobody takes it away from me before you, of course. Technically, that would make you a four-region champion, since Johto and Kanto compete for the same title but hey, who's counting, right?" Lance offered, showing much and more of his typical ace-trainer charm. Previously she had harbored feelings of resentment for that smile and wink, but now, with what was being laid on the table, she felt a smile tug at the corner of her own mouth.

With three titles to her name, she would have instant majority in any decision that came before the board. Only Lance himself would be able to oppose any decisions she made, and even as President he could only _veto_policy changes, and only a certain amount of times. Charles was handing the league over to Lance, but it a large way, both of them would be deferring to her, should that all come to pass. Lance had to know that, yet the genuine look in his eyes did not reflect any sort of apprehension over it.

They shook hands then, the two Champions that had so long stood divided. She'd voted against his promotion and lost, three to one. For the first time, she was glad of it. She'd been wrong about him.

"I will work hard alongside you, Cynthia," the younger Champion promised.

"I will do the same."

Charles clasped his hands over their own, one from the top, and one from the bottom, and gave a laugh. "Boy, it does this heart good to see that."

Cynthia was sad when the mood died, all three of them seeming to remember what had to come next.

Reclining into his chair, Charles pushed a switch on his console, and spoke to his secretary. "Karen?"

"Yes Mr. Goodshow?"

"Could you please send in Scott?"

* * *

A/N: I've wanted to do Anabel for so long, as I've always pictured her as this very tactile character, so getting to do that was very enjoyable. Deliah without Ash around was fun, too. Not wildly different, since most of the maternal stuff is still there. Decided to go the way I'd chosen after the poll results were mostly accepting. See? Not too bad, right?

If I had to guess, I'd say that this chapter was a little on the bulky side, especially with how political it got towards the end there, but I really needed to get some structuring out of the way, so there you are. Plus, who doesn't like Cynthia?

_You kinda made her come off as a bitch, actually._

Whatever, she's still awesome! *sticks out tongue*

Until next time!


	18. Chapter XVIII

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokémon.

**Chapter Summary: **As the League quashes the Tojou investigation, collateral damage becomes unavoidable. Will the toll prove too high? What happens when Ash is pushed beyond the limits his heart can withstand? When misfortune bites him yet again, will he bite back?**  
**

**A/N: **This one took a while, and I won't lie to you, Borderlands 2 did slow it down quite a bit—but don't worry—I'm still shootin', and I'm still getting headshots! And I'm still writing, too, I guess…Anyways, big things in store this chapter!

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XVIII**

"Hard Decisions"

"There is no expectation from the Viridian Police to find foul play and as this event, at least unescalated, should not fall outside their jurisdiction, we would be remiss not to use our influence." Lance had set the mood with his suggestion, and it was not a particularly nice one. The move was shrewd and political, and honestly she'd expected it to come from herself. The fact that lance had pioneered the idea probably spoke volumes as to why Charles had selected him as his successor.

"Are you suggesting that we—that I-interfere with an official police investigation?" Scott asked, his voice shaking.

The rotund man gave off a first impression of easygoing ineptitude, with his flip-flops and print-shirt, but it had been easy to tell that Scott was simply a self-made man. The Battle Frontier was no conglomerate, simply a coalition of trainers funded and furnished by Scott alone. He was not used to corporate direction, in any capacity, let alone the topics they were brushing upon now.

They scared him, and that came as a relief to Cynthia somehow-if for no other reason than to reassure her that there were still normal people, with normal nerves, and normal thresholds of acceptability, who affected things on their level. The Frontier was not as influential or as massive as the league, but as a private entity, it was close to the same thing in terms of absolute scale. Scott was a multi-billionaire tycoon, in just the same way Charles Goodshow was.

That Charles could sit here with both arms crossed, quietly allowing Lance to make the suggestions he was making, while Scott shook at the knees, spoke volumes as to the inherent difference between them. Scott was a wealthy man, capable of affecting much with the trainers under his employ. Ultimately, however, it was the three of them, sitting here, who had to make the big, ugly decisions for the good of the region, without flinching. In a way, Cynthia found it comforting that they stood alone. Or, at least, that nobody else had to stand with them on this level.

Most assuredly, it was a big and ugly decision that they had to make now. And for it, their share would be the quiet, angry blame of those who knew, and the loud adoration of those that did not. Perhaps not a fair balance, but none the less, that is how it would be.

Still, to assure Lance that she would act in support, she cut in. "We're suggesting that we do whatever is required to keep this incident from adding fuel to a potential conflagration. The PLF has the potential to deal untold damage to our current social and business model. By allowing this case to draw to its natural conclusion, we would give them exactly what they want. This is more than just us calling upon you protect the status quo."

Lance gave her a probationary nod, as Scott continued to stammer. "With-hold the blueprints. The building is private, non-governmental architecture, which means that you have the only copies. Tell them that the original blue-prints were destroyed in a filing accident, but that you'd be willing to act as a consultant in regards to the building's design. If they're subpoenaing the blueprints, than it obviously means that they're looking for an accidental cause. It won't take an idiot to eliminate that from the list, if they realize that the facility had a hydro-electric dam providing power, without the need for combustibles on-hand."

Charles cleared his throat. "Explain the blueprints however you like and we will corroborate. What's important here is that you file the charges."

Scott's expression soured, until it was practically a grimace. She could not hold him in contempt for it. On the contrary, she felt for him. "You're asking me to condemn my own people."

"We understand your hesitance." Cynthia inhaled, letting her chest swell, and then exhaled slowly, deflecting both of her coworkers with a wave. "It is perfectly reasonable. I'm sure all of us want the best possible outcome, and we do understand that it is a difficult thing that we ask. None the less, we must ask it of you, for the sake of continued prosperity for all of us."

"I don't even know what's happened to her," Scott lamented, nearly collapsing back into his chair with resignation.

"The League will conduct its own investigation," Charles said, plainly sympathetic.

"So that's it, then. We're just above the law, now?" Scott asked, with what seemed more like resignation than contempt, to her hearing of it, though the contempt was surely still there.

Cynthia wasn't sure she had an answer for that.

The fact was they had to keep this matter out of the civil system at all costs. The PLF becoming a serious inland threat to any of the five major regions in the public opinion would ultimately lead to unrest of the most extreme kinds, just as it had in Unova a decade hence. Violent demonstrations in opposition to Pokémon training, rioting outside Pokémon Centers, open threats against the league and it's trainers; panic caused by the PLFs inciting ideals. All radical ideas could be proliferated thus, if the correct amount of fear and anger were present and if it came to light that a foreign terrorist cell was blowing up buildings in Kanto, that fear and anger would certainly arise.

She was not so arrogant or blinded by her own power to believe that she was a supreme authority on all things, and she did not believe that Charles or Lance thought so of themselves, either, however used to being in charge they might've been. However, this was a decision that needed to be made, and needed to be made now. If no one else had the courage or strength to make it, than it was their place to rise to the occasion.

Still, Scott had a point. Would there come a time when they made these decisions for less than magnanimous reasons? Would they one day mislead the proper channels of investigation to protect some misstep of their own, and say that too was a move to protect the well-being of the league? They were its faces after all.

The brutal and honest truth of it, was that they had that sort of power already well within their grasp. If they so desired to abuse it, surely they would have already. Of the three league officials here sitting, she believed herself to be honestly the most vainglorious. She had a clearly elevated opinion of herself over what even Lance seemed to. His was more a cool, reserved pride. Charles seemed to feel that he was more a custodial presence within the league, than an executive one. So, if there were someone apt to abuse that power, it would be her, and her pride itself stood vigilant against that. She'd go down in a burning heap of her own controversy before allowing herself to sidestep it with crooked bureaucracy.

In that regard, she felt safe from the eventuality Scott was alluding to. It still remained that they were heinously breaking the law, but that would just have to be put aside for now. This was for the good of Kanto, and ultimately, of all of the regions. The road to hell may well have been paved with good intentions, but the long and short of it was that if Kanto, the seat of the League collapsed, so to would the rest of them, like dominoes. She opened her mouth to speak in reassurance of just these conclusions, but Lance spoke first.

Almost angrily, which was quite unlike him, Lance slammed his hand against the mahogany, to jar Scott from his abjection. "Get ahold of yourself, Scott! You are not the only one who is uncertain about what is ahead of us, and you are not the only one missing someone." The rebuke was the closest thing to a professional snarl she thought she'd ever heard, and she thought for a moment that somehow Lt. Surge had been hiding somewhere in the room.

With a pause and a heave of his own breath, Lance drew a hand back through his hair. "Understand that I too have lost contact someone who was a friend and colleague, before you level wide-sweeping accusations. We can all understand your misgivings without you piling admonishments onto us. None of us are without conscience." Lance leveled a finger at his own face. "I sent an agent to investigate PLF operatives whom I believe to be responsible for the explosion at Tojou Falls, and the ultimate destruction of the Battle Tower, and thus far I have not received any contact from that agent."

Scott flinched, as if he had been slapped. Though Cynthia and Charles seemed poised to leap toward Lance to hold him in check, lest he say something else emotional and drastic, they both held their tongues. Lance seemed to settle, then continued.

"Now, if we can both set these culpabilities aside, I think that you will find that we can do far more good for ourselves, for the trainers of the region and ultimately, for those whom we are concerned for, than if we remain mired in doubt." Lance sat up very high in his chair, and returned both hands to his lap. Amazingly, Scott did the same.

The room was silent for a time, and then it was Charles who spoke. "Lance has already asked to head up a private investigation of the Tojou Falls site, and I have agreed to that. I think it will be in our best interest for Lance to act as liaison between the Battle Frontier and the Viridian Police Department as well, given your reservations. If you assign him provisionary power of attorney, he will be able to provide all the necessary arrangements directly to the police, when he leaves to conduct that investigation," Charles offered. "However, it will still be up to you to file the charges."

Scott, who had begun to look hopeful, was now crestfallen. Cynthia felt like she couldn't blame him. Silently, he nodded. And so it was that their meeting concluded. Scott left their company, presumably in order to draft the necessary paperwork, and make the necessary calls, with assurances that all would be in order, just as they had outlined.

Like Wallace and Iris, it was high time she got back to her own duties in her own region, and so she stood from her high-backed chair, and opened her mouth to bid her farewells. Lance was there to cut her off before she could, however, having already risen. "Could I ask you to accompany me, Cynthia?"

She blinked once, quite taken aback. She could find no reason to decline however, and so she agreed.

Shortly thereafter, she found herself stepping into the back of a well-appointed stretch limo, alongside her fellow champion. She thought perhaps she would turn a questioning look on him, when he sat down across from her, but his face was the very thoughtful already and so it became more of a lame, quizzical thing. "What did you want me here for?"

"For two reasons, actually," Lance said, with a half-hearted laugh, which turned to a sigh. "The first one is to make sure that Scott doesn't turn out to be right." The Kantonese Champion gave a determined shake of his head. "I don't want to abuse the system any more than he does, really."

She nodded. She supposed she could understand that. She hadn't expected that sort of thing from Lance, but she could understand that. She wondered if she'd of asked the same thing of him, were their roles reversed—to simply be present in order to keep her honest, so to speak.

Probably not, she wagered. It got back to her streak of pride.

"What's the second reason?"

"I want you to help me with some other business," he explained vaguely, leaning back into the leather seat.

She quirked a brow at him, now taking up the more condescending gaze of interrogation she'd meant to earlier, but if Lance noticed it, he didn't let it show. Once again those boyish features thawed back into the look of imperturbable relaxation he usually carried, and he signaled for the driver to take them onward.

She leaned against the door with a breezy sigh. She'd never really been one to ride around in flashy cars. She usually got where she was going with the help of her Pokémon alone. Only over the last year or so, had she been traveling with Charles in her jet, as a matter of convenience. In that regard, it usually proved to be far more comfortable this way, but traveling on the back of her Garchomp just seemed so much more natural.

The limo took to the dirt road that led from Victory Road out into the rural Kantonese mountain range with surprising alacrity. Soon enough they approached the cordoned area where the VCPD was conducting their investigation, and they were slowed to a stop by flaggers, a condition which lasted about as long as it took Lance to step out of the car.

His level of panache was almost uncanny, really. If all the forces of the universe came together to create the most photogenic and charismatic celebrity, the resultant person probably would've been almost as smooth as Lance. It made her a little uncomfortable, to be honest, as he smiled with perfect white teeth, and even winked when appropriate. She couldn't even imagine herself winking when talking to someone else, much less having it seem appropriate. What made it worse was that he wasn't talking to reporters. He was talking to cops.

None the less, he had a good collection of Jennies, who should've been hard at work, hanging from his every word as though they were paparazzi, eager to get the next big piece of gossip about the Champ. She could hear him through the cracked window of the limo. "I'm here to conduct an investigation alongside local police workers, such as yourselves,"—a huge smile, and nod of appreciative deference, came along here—"on behalf of the Pokémon League."

She smacked her lips, as though trying to get a bad taste out of her mouth, and turned away from the display. She was glad she'd remained in the car, for the time being.

"All of our findings will be available to you once the investigation is over. This is a _public_ investigation, and will continue to be unless sensitive material is found," came a hard voice from the crowd. Cynthia snapped her head over, wondering if perhaps a man would have a harder time swallowing Lance's glamour. She quietly hoped so.

It wasn't a man, though. At least, not as far as she could tell. A blue-haired woman, though larger in design than any of those surrounding her stood to the front of the crowd. Lance, obviously not seeing the need to introduce himself, extended his hand, and politely asked her name.

Cynthia felt a smile tug at her mouth, when the woman popped open a leather bifold and planted it into his palm, as opposed to accepting the offered handshake. "Detective Penny, VCPD. I'm heading up this investigation, and I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave."

Lance seemed a little bewildered, as he looked over the badge and handed it back. "I see. I apologize, but, I have been asked to oversee a private investigation by the owner of this property." It did genuinely seem like he was sorry, so powerful was his public speaking ability. He handed her a stack of clipped paperwork. "I won't do anything to hinder your investigation whilst I conduct my own. I plan on starting on the far side of the property, as a matter of fact. You'll see that I have every right to be here. You must understand that as you are a civil servant, and I am an acting legal custodian, the things we are looking for may be wildly different."

Cynthia couldn't decide whether she was grudging or relieved when Penny eventually agreed with him, though warily. She tried to wipe her face clean of expression at any rate, and hopefully managed a convincing look of detachment by the time Lance came back.

The limo hummed on, down the dirt track, which eventually faded to nothing in the surrounding forest. They were being ghosted by a squad car, which the detective had like as not placed on them, but it didn't seem likely that it would be able to reliably follow them, given the terrain. She wasn't even really certain how the limo had managed to make it this far, truth be told. She nodded in that direction for Lance's benefit, but he didn't seem to need to warning.

Lance turned to the front and directed his driver with a causal tone. He'd never really felt like there was much need for the privacy window that separated the two compartments, because he'd never bought into the idea that he was of a different caste of people than anyone else. He certainly enjoyed attention, but he'd never gone so far as to consider himself elevated. "Will, once we go around this next copes of trees, stop. Cynthia and I will get out there. As soon as the doors are closed, keep driving around for about fifteen minutes, then double back, and return to Indigo Plateau."

"Decoy limo! Very classy," the purple-haired driver said with a laugh. "I guess you'll be heading back on your own, then?"

"You got it."

The evacuation the vehicle was much less of a fire-drill than she'd imagined it would be, and her and Lance, quite in spite of their previous comfort, had themselves stuffed down into a hutch on the side of the road. She nearly failed to surpass a childish giggle, as the patrol vehicle crept right past them, unawares, yet close enough to reach out and touch. In fact, the only reason she didn't fail, was because Lance did, and she wouldn't be seen sniggering by and beside the likes of him.

She stood and dusted herself off, and tried to look unimpressed, once the coast was clear. He smiled widely at her, but she shrugged and looked away, her nose high. Just because she'd agreed to work with him, didn't mean she had to encourage his antics. She impatiently gestured for him to lead on, but instead, he withdrew a pokenav.

Flicking it on, he only stood there and waited.

She frowned, thinking him quite stupid, but faintly she heard a sound, far off into the tree line. When she looked, trying to find its exact source, she heard it again. Closer this time. Instinctually, she put a hand into her frock to take hold of a poke ball, but a small chuckle from Lance let her know she'd erred amusingly. She scowled.

A man emerged from the tree line, holding a handheld device that was making the sound. The noise got higher in pitch and frequency as he approached. She recognized him plainly, for she'd seen him earlier that same day. It was Blaine, she saw, even from this distance

Not caring at all for having made a fool of herself in front of him, she rounded on Lance "So Blain is one of your _G-Men_?" she asked. "When you said you were wanted my help with business, I figured you were coming here to meet with one of them." After stopping to think for a moment, she kept right on railing him, with renewed anger. "Tell me, is Will one of the G-Men, too?"

Though generally she was much more polite toward him of late, he did not miss the heat in her tone. "Perhaps he is, perhaps he isn't." Lance answered, careful not to glance toward the approaching man, nor off in the direction Will had driven. The G-Men had their own problems to take care of, for sure, and he did not need Cynthia to fly off the handle, asking him this that and the other. He needed her help with the logistics, not spilling all the details of his team. He held up his hands to placate her.

The coyness did not pay off, however. He'd known from the jump that no secret would be safe with Cynthia—that was the mark of a true battler, after all—but she didn't have to treat what was happening like it was all just a showy way for him to make her look bewildered, and drag her through the woods. He was a little more mature than that. Still, her look was pretty withering, letting him know that's exactly what she thought it was all about.

"You certainly have a flair for the dramatic, don't you, Lance? If you need to talk to Blaine, by all means, go right ahead, but don't expect me to get involved in your little _spy-games. _I've seen a Dowsing Machine before, alright?" she said, favoring him with a derisive and unimpressed stare, as she flicked her finger at the device Blaine was approaching them with.

Lance crossed his arms and let out the smallest huff. He was still the one everyone called "The Champ" and his ace-trainer glibness was more than just skin-deep, but Cynthia seemed to be immune to the greater portion of his charms. Subtle dismissals and redirection of her frustration exhausted, he opted for veiled insult. "Pretty sharp for an _older lady_."

That hardly bought him an impassive chuckle. "Trust me; you don't know the half of it."

Lance shook his head. "Fine. Stay, here if you want," he conceded with a shrug. "Seems like a waste of time to have followed me all the way out here, just to stand in some bushes."

She quirked a brow, and through her expression alone he could tell she intended to do nothing of the sort.

"Look, I know this might seem like a game to you," Lance offered, his placation honest, if a bit exasperated, "And I can see how from your perspective it might just seem like another _flair_, but I assure you that it isn't. I promise that if you just listen instead of giving me a hard time, everything will make sense."

His dark brown eyes smoldered as she frowned him down and eventually, she was forced to relent. Well not forced to, but she decided to anyways. She made a locking key motion at her lips, and followed with a shake of her head, and roll of her eyes.

Lance and Blaine, closed on each other, but neither one acknowledged the other, nor did Blaine register her. Cynthia thought that was rather stupid, since she clearly knew who he was, (they'd been at a meeting table together no more than a few hours ago) and so would almost anyone else who happened to pass by, so it was obvious that they were all in the know. Maybe there was some strange Kantonese code of conduct in play here, but she doubted it. She knew that nobody was that rude on accident, so it had to be more of Lance's spy-crap.

"Have you heard from our man?" Lance asked, as he casually looked everywhere but at Blaine.

She snorted, both slightly annoyed that neither of them seemed to pay her any mind as a dangling third party, and that they didn't mention dare mention the name of this "Man" in front of her. To her even greater annoyance, she suspected they wouldn't have mentioned his name were she not here, either.

"He visited me at the gym on Seafoam four days ago. Asked to borrow some equipment to use in the investigation. Not since then," Blaine commented, looking down at the dirt, but facing directly away from Lance.

"I haven't gotten any word from him about the investigation at all. Not that such is particularly unusual. You know him. He won't tell you anything until he feels like he's finished. Last time I saw him was on Mandarin. He called me a day or two after that, but it didn't have anything to do with the investigation." Lance commented, toward the sky.

She wanted to scream. She didn't because Blaine glanced sideways, finally engaging Lance directly, however minor that might've been. "Before or after I saw him?"

"Before."

"What was the call about?" Blaine asked.

Now becoming confused, Lance turned to face the Gym-Leader as well. "His son. Like I said, nothing about the investigation."

Both of them, drawn to a natural terminus of thought, flinched when Cynthia stamped her foot. "He, He, He!" she complained loudly. "Who the hell are you talking about?!"

Lance looked over at her, and tried his best to hide his smirk behind a look of impatience. She was so curious and flustered that she didn't even seem to notice she'd reneged on her decision not to get involved. At his stare she went red in the face, and spun sharply away.

At her example, the two men once more looked away from each other. All now suitably spy-like, Lance answered her question: "Silver Ketchum. My friend. The agent."

Back at the VCPD investigation site, Penny stood side-by side with one of the officers on the scene.

"So how's it going with you and that cute guy you met at the Laundromat?"

Penny ignored the question, and continued to read the spectrograph. "You've got nothing on chemical-analysis?"

"We've got readings here that indicate moderate to high concentrations of petroleum-based combustion, in samples taken ten meters below the surface of the wreckage," Jenny explained, indicating two slight spikes in the graph. She broke into an insidious smirk. "Did you hook up with him yet, or what?"

"So that's our probable cause? Gas-bomb?" Penny asked, not bothering to glance sideways.

Jenny frowned. "Not likely. We've got too much wreckage here for the relatively miniscule returns we've gotten. It's more likely that fuel oil in the sub-levels caught on fire by accident, or as a result of some other inciting event."

"Why would there have been fuel stockpiles on hand?" Penny looked up from the spectrograph for the first time.

Jenny made a sweeping point out to the edges of the blast-zone. "No downed power-lines. In fact, no power lines at all."

"So this place was off the grid," Penny surmised. "Possible system malfunction? Generator fuel-tanks explode; take out the support columns, the whole place crumbles?"

"We'll know more when the subpoena for the facilities blueprints goes through. I wouldn't count on it, though. Non-residential structures in the western quarter that are over two stories tall have to meet the _Kantonese Special Buildings Provision for Earthquake and Typhoon_. Their substructures have to be able to withstand a certain amount of sideways force and vibration. Doesn't seem likely that a blast produced by accelerants would collapse the whole building, but like I said before, we'll know more when the subpoena goes through," Jenny concluded, before her smile ruptured through again, and she gave penny a nudge on the arm. "So I heard he has a son! Is that true?"

Penny let the paper drop to her waist and let out a long, impatient breath through her nose.

"Ooh, I knew it! A family-man," Jenny squealed, bouncing up and down on her toes. "That's perfect for you! I was wondering when you were finally going to settle down and move out of that studio apartment. Honestly, you've had it since college. I was starting to suspect you of spinsterhood."

Penny's scowl deepened, but she refused to have this conversation. Her gear rang and she dug it out of her pocket and pointed it towards the wreckage. "Why don't you get back to work and find me some evidence I can actually use, _officer_." She thrust the spectrograph back into Jenny's hands and turned sharply away, flipping the gear open and putting it to her ear.

"This is Penny." She put as much distance between herself and Jenny before she had to say more, in case it actually was Mark. He was a sweet guy and all, but she couldn't have him wrecking her professional reputation.

It wasn't him, though, it was her sergeant. "Penny!" he barked, as though it were necessary to clarify who he would shortly drill out, even though he'd called her on the phone. "Have you got probable cause on that scrap-heap yet?"

"No sir. Forensics is jerking me around, and now there's a League PI here sticking his nose in it." She didn't bother to say it was Lance, since that would imply she gave a damn.

"Just get your ass back to headquarters, then. You'll never believe who just walked in here." He hung up and left her stuttering.

In a huff she got back on her bike and roared back to Viridian City. It was a short drive, fortunately, and so it was not long before she stomped up the steps into Viridian Metro headquarters, and found her sergeant withering away at someone seated at her desk with a black-eyed stare. When he stepped aside to allow her to resume control of her own desk, which he had annoyingly annexed in her absence, she had to admit that she was indeed surprised. Perhaps pleasantly, but surprised none the less. Not so subtly, she pushed him out of her cubicle.

"Just waltzed right on in, like she was expected," her sergeant harrumphed.

"She said anything so far?" Penny asked, diligently, but still with the direct intention of ushering him away.

"Not a damn thing. Why do you think I called you back here?" he asked, finally relinquishing the desk and their guest to her authority. "Sure isn't coz of your charming personality," he muttered, as he departed.

Distractions gone, she turned to look at the young girl sitting across from her, pensive in lilac. "Do you mind answering a few questions?"

The girl shook her head. "Sorry, but I need to speak with my employer first."

Penny crossed her arms. That was going to change. She was the force's interrogative specialist, after all. She decided to lay her cards on the table here—face up so that she would know they were all aces. "I'm afraid that this has become somewhat more serious than just a simple matter between employer and employee. I'd like to avoid having to serve you a court-order, but the fact is, you could be a suspect. If you don't want me to detain you right here and now, I'm afraid you're going to have to cooperate with me."

Anabel did not falter in the slightest. She did not like to think that she led a lonely life, but she had spent more time curled between the pages of a book, than in the company of others. Books interested her, for they were the next best thing to a true account of a person.

The written word was a middle-ground to the truth and untruth of the human psyche. People were far more willing to write the truth, than to speak it. That safety, that barrier of disconnect between the speaker and listener, provoked more honesty than a lifetime of comfort. It was why people often wrote more in their memoirs than they would ever admit aloud to even their most cherished loved ones. For this reason, missives, correspondences, and autobiographies were her favorites.

Books of all kinds passed through her fingers, though, and she was well versed in law, among other things. Anabel narrowed her gaze. "You don't have enough probable cause to detain me. If I agree to questioning it's one thing, but I also have my rights to private council should you choose to serve a subpoena. I'm here by choice, and I can leave the same way. The best you could hope for is to force me to appear in court before year's-end."

That, of course, begged the question of why she was here at all, which she neither wanted nor needed the detective to know. It was because she was scared and reasonably so, she felt, given that her home and place of work had been utterly smashed to the ground, nearly with her inside it, by as of yet unconfirmed and unidentified attackers.

This was the safest place for her, and at the same time, the most dangerous. It was a stab-in-the-dark game of cat-and-mouse for the detective, she was sure. Penny couldn't be aware how much she knew, or what her level of involvement was, and likewise the detective couldn't ask questions too obviously, for fear of making it obvious how little she actually had to go on. It was never a game that Anabel would lose. She could read the gauging feelings and the confusion within Penny, and Anabel would never reveal a wit of her own thoughts.

Anabel was not and truly could never have been vindictive, but she had people to protect, including herself. Regardless of the morality of it, she would use the talents that Arceus gave her. The words that came next, though, surprised Anabel and scared her. It was a possibility that she had never considered, and it shook her to the core.

Anabel could see everything, all the way down to the core of a person if she looked hard enough, but what she couldn't see no matter how hard she focused, was something that was a surprise to both of them.

"That's all true," Penny replied, suddenly taking up a more casual tone. If this girl wanted to play hardball, then she was stepping into a world that was Penny's domain. The detective took a manila folder from atop her desk, and unwrapped the twine binding. It contained the forwarded legal documents she'd received only a few hours ago. Perhaps there would be something in her that would help her. With a few flicks of her fingers, she found that there was, indeed.

"…Unless the Battle Frontier has already filed charges against you for gross negligence and destruction of property," she offered, turning the small stack of papers over in her hand, and dropping them to the desk so that Anabel could read the warrant for her arrest.

Penny looked over the young girl, without betraying what she felt. The girl's façade of control crumbled harshly and honestly, she did not feel vindicated by what she beheld. This was just her job. She had no vendetta against the Salon Maiden and honestly, forensics seemed to be looking for any reason not to believe that the damage had been accidental. Still, police-work wasn't all back-patting and cuff-slapping.

Sometimes, though, it was hard to watch people cry. Especially when they were so young.

* * *

Chikorita had never thought of herself as a powerful Pokémon. She had never thought of herself as much of anything, really, except she had always thought of herself as being _his_, even if he had always deserved better.

Not twice, but three times she had been passed over, on the day she was to have been selected. Not only were Totodile and Cindaquil both chosen before her, but a boy had even begged to take a spare Sentret the professor had lying around, before someone had finally taken her. Not chosen, of course, but at least taken.

Silver had also had his heart set on another. He'd demanded a Totodile as soon as he'd come in, late as he was for almost everything. He'd always been rude. Except to her.

Rude or no, he'd gotten no Totodile nor a Cindaquil, as had been his second choice. Instead, he'd gotten her.

He hadn't complained but neither had he rejoiced it seemed, when she thought back on it. She'd started his career with disappointment, and it had never seemed as though she'd done anything to turn that around for him. Whenever she saw Totodile and Cindaquil thereafter, they'd both gotten so strong. Evolved—twice! Her? She had never become strong. She had never evolved, either. It had not been for lack of trying, or encouragement…but it had just never happened.

So Silver had gone to twenty-some-odd regional tournaments in his long career, and because of her he'd never taken home a trophy. Not a one. Salamence had taken them close a few times, but they'd always fallen short and it seemed like it was always because of her.

Yet Silver had never set her aside, never scorned her, never forced her to evolve and never, not even once, had he blamed her for being so useless. He'd never tried to exclude her and he'd always defended her, and defied anyone who told him it might be a better idea to capture a different Pokémon to fill her spot, or to at least evolve her.

"No!" He'd yell, poking whoever it happened to be right in their chest, in that way only he seemed able to. "And shut your damn mouth about it. Chikorita's my best friend, and we've been together since day one, and we're gonna be together forever, no matter what! She's great just the way she is!"

He'd really surprised her when he'd had it out with a man who collected rare Pokémon, when he'd offered to trade a Tropius for her. She'd seen the man's Tropius. A big, strong Grass Pokémon, which was surely her superior in every single way.

Still, Silver had chased the man right out of the Pokémon center, threatening to have Salamence chomp him up if he ever showed his face again. Then he'd said something that Chikorita believed for a long time Silver had only said in the heat of the moment, and hadn't come to truly believe until much later. "I wouldn't trade Chikorita for a Moltres, much less a Tropius!" he'd roared.

Silver had a life-long obsession with Moltres, so that had been a big deal to her. It couldn't have been the truth. Silver would've been a fool to pass up a Moltres for her. But still, to have said it at all…

She'd tried to be the best Pokémon she could to Silver, even if it had never really amounted to much, especially after that day. She'd never been powerful in the way that Salamence was, but she'd always been loyal. She'd have done anything for him. That was why she'd been just about ready to leap into the path of that woman's cannon when Silver had thrown her off, unexpectedly.

And now, Silver was…

Silver was…

Well, it got right back to the fact that she'd never really been that great of a Pokémon.

_That Tropius could've saved him_, Chikorita told herself. _Tropius can fly._

Silver deserved a Tropius. Hell, he deserved a Moltres for putting up with her as long as he did!

Instead he had her, and now he was dead!

Chikorita's legs hurt, but she didn't adjust her hooves from where they were, folded beneath her. She'd sat here all day and all night. The least she could do was lay here and die alongside the spot where his hand protruded bloodlessly from the riverbank. She could pretend, at least, in her final days, to be a good Pokémon.

The fall had battered her up a bit, but she wasn't too badly injured. It would take a long time to slip away from guilt alone. It might take weeks to die of starvation and exposure, but she would never again leave this place. Not for any reason.

When a darkly-dressed, robed figure appeared on the bank opposite her, she did not falter nor panic, even though at first she'd believed it to be that woman. She'd nearly taken a lunge at them. That wouldn't have been a bad way to go, avenging Silver. Maybe it wasn't as good as saving him, but it was still something.

But it had turned out to be someone else. She didn't know who, exactly, but she wasn't like Silver. She didn't have the courage, or the desire to chase after whoever it was; to force them away from here out of any sense of solitude or propriety. And the figure just sat there, waiting, for a very long time, so it made no difference to her.

"Are you all alone?" the figure asked. A man's voice, deep and bracing. Definitely not that woman.

She didn't know how to respond at first, and she had a vigil to keep, so she did not speak to him.

"Your friend is not dead," the man remarked.

Chikorita's heart soared, until he went on. "Salamence is only calcified. I should be able to turn him back. I've seen it done it before."

That realization just made her cry. She'd never even thought to be sad for Salamence. How could she, when Silver was… It didn't matter, because he wasn't even talking about Silver! Silver was gone! Gone forever! She nuzzled closer to the lifeless hand, and wept. "Chii—i—i—i—kaa—a—a—a!"

The man seemed to realize what he was actually looking at then, and stood, as though he hadn't noticed the bloodless arm before. His full height was nearly the same as Silver's, though of he seemed of a different stature. It was hard to tell just how different, though, with so much of him obscured beneath that brown cloak. She thought maybe the sight of that twisted, broken limb had alarmed him, but the truth was that he was thinking.

A lot of responsibilities had fell on his shoulders as of late and leading the guardians was not the least among these. He felt as though he had to be up to the challenge, even if he was not the all-knowing leader everyone seemed to believe that he was.

Red had taught him much and more concerning what it meant to be a guardian, both through instruction and example, but even his own education had been incomplete before the man—a boy in truth, but as wise as any man—had said farewell. Red had been a master to him in the same way that Riley believed he himself was a master to them all, but the truth was that it was blind leading the blind. Perhaps it had even been that way when Red was master over him. Who could say?

The total number of fully-realized Guardians world-wide now numbered under ten, with Sheena and Kevin gone—something that he was rightly to blame for. He'd as good as led them straight into that trap, and he still didn't have any explanation for what had befallen them, other than that he could no longer sense their aura. In his experience, that meant only one thing. They had passed on from this world.

Sheena and Kevin had been the last of the Guardians Red had inducted into the order, before passing it on to him. Now, like their teacher, they were gone. That put the Guardians in dire straits.

The change he'd felt coming for them all, months ago… had it been this? Was the swell just the proverbial tsunami that would efface the Guardians from the word? The world had all but forgotten about them, over the centuries, and they had only minor allies that knew of their existence at all. Essentially, they could all vanish and next to no one would be any the wiser. Nobody of real, global consequence would care if they ceased to exist at all.

Also, because of the way the Guardians operated, he'd never even met face-to-face with some of them. He didn't even know the names of the three Guardians from Unova, or how to contact them, which was why he'd had to send Kevin and Sheena in the first place! To even say that Riley and Steven were the only two currently on the continent, would only have been as far as he knew. Ash Ketchum had declined them and in all likelihood, Riley was on his way back to Rota to tell him that Anabel had as well.

Still, even realizing that the Guardians were on the verge of falling into shambles, and even knowing what another loss to the Guardians would mean in this dire time, were he to try and fail, he was still considering trying to help this Chikorita, here and now. Guardians revered life and he, more than most. His experiences had taught him to have implicit respect for life, regardless of its beginnings, and Red had only reinforced those lessons. No average Guardian could do what he could, after all. Red had left him in charge as the strongest of them, after himself.

He didn't truly know this man first-hand, but it hardly mattered. Certain things were left behind when people passed from this world, and he could tell much and more from only that. He knew from his own life, that sometimes the most important thing that people had left behind when they died, were the impressions that they left on others.

It was obvious that this dead man had a profound effect on this Pokémon. He'd been very good to it, most certainly. He closed his eyes, letting himself feel the energy that this man's mortal coil had left to linger here.

Even as powerful of a guardian as he was, he didn't know what happened to people after they died—not really. But it was evidential that some part of them lived on, even if it was less material than they had once been. He couldn't say for sure if the deceased had some will left on this world, or if it was simply something more like a residue that was left behind. But he knew that this man's spirit had been very potent in life. A strong, perhaps forceful man; Gruff, and abrasive. But at his core, he'd been a truly passionate and caring person, who had sacrificed and sweat to do for others. Particularly his Pokémon.

He was sure that he did not interpret some of the feelings left behind correctly, but their effects were more obvious in this Pokémon. This little Chikorita, all she had was this man. No one else had ever befriended her, or loved her, and that made him sad. It reminded him of all the Pokémon he'd once cared for.

He'd shepherded them for quite some time, before parting ways with them, when he was satisfied that they would do well enough on their own. He wondered if they had thought of him as their friend, or knew that he'd loved them all in his own way. He'd never been demonstrative in that way.

He blew out through his nostrils, and tried to concentrate himself. "Do you intend to stay here forever?"

Chikorita did not stop crying, but nodded at him.

"What good will that do?"

As expected, there was an explosion of anger. Like Riley, he was not the most personable of Guardians. It stood to reason, anyways. It was a harsh anger; and bitter. Six or seven blasts of razor-leaf tore through the brush and dirt of the riverbank where he had stood, at speeds that challenged even him. Still, he flicked and dodged and did not retaliate. He could understand. When the rage was spent he sat back down, this time somewhat closer; upon a rock in the middle of the stream.

"I want to help you," he soothed, "not fight you."

"Chika!" she rattled at him. "Chika-chik-chikorita!"

He nodded in deference. "I am sure he was well worth the sacrifice." Though he'd never shown such strong feelings, he could tell that the emotion was legitimate. "But surely you can see that in the end it will be fruitless to simply lay here and waste away."

She thought for a moment that she might've lashed out but it ended up being a futile effort on Chikorita's part to become angry. Everything in her life had been fruitless, after all. Why should this mean something, of all the things she'd done?

"Chika, chi." She begged, just wishing that the man would go away, and leave her to her sadness.

He didn't though. He was just trying to construct a good way to explain himself without sounding like he was some storybook devil. He was fearful that his help in this matter might seem like that, to some. Nothing could be done without a toll exacted, truthfully. Eventually, he decided that simplicity was the best way to go about it. Not all benevolence could sound as such.

"If you truly would sacrifice yourself, I would help you make it worth something. I cannot simply breathe life into a body that is broken an empty, but…"

He let go of a regretful sigh. "I can broker a trade—one life for another—your Aura, for his." It was a dangerous thing to ask for, and a dangerous thing to try. Better Guardians than him had lost their lives in that way, but he was willing to put his training on the line for a heart so pure, that it would be willing to sacrifice everything.

Maybe it was just stubbornness, and it certainly made him sad, but he would not stand by and do nothing, not even with the Guardians as desperate and confused as they were.

* * *

"I sent him out as a feeler, to see if I could pick up on any movement going on in Kanto. There were two characters I followed out of Cerulean City on my last visit there, and they got me thinking that there might be syndicated agents on the mainland. Of course, I couldn't prove anything, which was why I asked Silver to see if he could sniff anything out," Lance explained. "At the time I did have reason to agree with Kantonese Authority assessment that Team Rocket might've been involved with the events at Viridian, two months ago. Given what we know now, with the PLF press-release tape and everything else since, I think it's reasonable to guess that Silver's suspicions came to rest upon foreign terror cells, rather than domestic problems."

"So that was when Silver came to me, looking into Signals Intelligence," Blaine reasoned. "I guess he figured he could pick up on suspicious over-seas phone-calls, and somehow filter them out from the millions of other ordinary calls going through the relays. I tried to give him some idea of what to look for, code-phrases some of the old teams used to use, and such, but even still it wouldn't have narrowed things down much. I don't think he heard a word I said after 'this piece of equipment should do that' even though I immediately told him all the reasons it wouldn't work."

"The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits," Lance quoted, with a snort. "You tell Silver he can't do something, and he'll eventually prove you wrong."

"I don't think Einstein quite meant it in that regard," Blaine admitted, "but I see your point."

"So we assume that sometime after we saw him, he caught a lead, which brought him here in a hurry?" the Indigo Champion asked.

"Yes. I put a GPS locator into the equipment that I gave him, but unfortunately he left that near a relay station about sixty miles to the north-east," Blaine said, obviously trying to hide a note of frustration. "Though, Luckily I also put another locator into his coat while he was rummaging around in my lab"

"Oh, well that's easy, we'll just follow it with your Dowsing Machine, like how you did with my PokeNav."

There was a long pause, before Blaine responded. "That's just the problem, Lance. I'm no longer receiving a signal from the locator."

Lance blinked. "Well, what does that mean?"

"It means that the locator is broken," Cynthia cut in, speaking up for the first time. Somewhere along the line, it must've become acceptable for them all to look at each other again, because they were. She glanced towards Blaine, who nodded at her assessment.

Lances' expression became wholly grim, but he asked anyways. "No chance it just ran out of batteries?"

"No chance at all. The locators operate independently and constantly for months," the scientist elucidated. "There's only two possibilities; either Silver found it and broke it himself, which seems unlikely, since that would take a concerted effort—the things are very durable, since I make them for Professor Oak's behavioral research, and they must be usable on Pokémon in the wild—not to mention I hid it pretty well..."

Lance rubbed the side of his face, seeming to contract down to regular size after losing some of the magnitude granted by his typical air of nonchalant confidence. "I don't really want to hear this, do I?"

Blaine winced. "Or, Silver suffered major damage to his person—enough to break it collaterally."

"What about coincidental damage, say from a Pokémon battle?" Lance queried, after a moment of rubbing at his chin. "Like, say, a chance miss from Electric-type attack, or something? Could that short-circuit it?"

"It could, perhaps, but probably not by a Pokémon, and certainly not by a chance miss. They have to be fairly well insulated as well, since they are used in the wild. It would take an electrical discharge that was several orders of magnitude stronger than any Electric-type Pokémon could produce," Blaine assured him.

"So, your assessment is that he was attacked?"

"Given the path of travel I was able to triangulate from what the locator reported back to the system, I'm sad to say, yes, that is my assessment." He held out the dowsing system, and indicated a sharply curved red line over a gridded, low-opacity map of the area. "He came in at high-speed, likely flying, given the curvature of the course, and after coming to a stall, turned and fled to the north.

Lance looked down at the dowsing machine, and wanted to slap it away. It didn't look like Silver had even made it very far. He didn't like seeing what might've been his oldest friend's life reduced to a computer graphic. "This might be the first time I've said this, but I hope you're wrong."

Blaine balked. "What, and I hope I'm not? Silver might be a pain in my neck, but you two were always—"

"Can we move along, please?" Cynthia barked. She'd gotten enough back-story. Weren't these guys supposed to be super-spies? Shouldn't they have been able to see that the important thing now, was to find their missing compatriot? "Did you say you had a last known location? We should move on that spot right now."

Blaine nodded. "Good thinking, you can start our search in earnest from there," he handed the dowsing machine to Lance, and rubbing his back in complaint. "I'm afraid I won't be of much use. I'd only slow you down. I need to get back to my lab, and run simulations based on some unusual physical evidence I gathered at the investigation site, before they lapse into irrelevancy, anyways. Hopefully it'll bring something to light and I'm not just going senile. Please call me if there's good news. If there's bad news…"

Blaine didn't say anything more but just gave a difficult nod, and patted the Champion on the arm. Lanced nodded in kind. Before the older man turned to leave, he held out a hand to Cynthia and shook it.

"Blaine," she acknowledged.

"Ms. Caroline," he responded, which made her quirk her brow.

How did Blaine know her grandmother? As Champion she'd always been immensely private concerning her family, even if her grandmother was overly proud of her and unafraid to voice that opinion. She could think of only just a handful of people who knew. An impulse prompted the question of whether or not Blaine had ever worked with her grandmother professionally to her lips, but the old scientist left then with a coy look, abandoning her to wonder if maybe there really was something to this spy stuff.

"Well, are you ready to help me now?" Lance asked, placing his hand on the poke ball at his hip.

She frowned, wanting to admonish him for wasting time asking such questions, while the fate of his friend was still unknown. If he was going to act like a big hero, he could at least benefit from some sense of urgency.

In response, she simply withdrew Garchomp's poke ball from her coat, and whipped it to the earth, expelling her own dragon in a burst of light. His Dragonite soon stood beside it, standing more immensely that she might've guessed it would. It occurred to her that she'd never seen a Dragonite up close before, which was not that unusual, given the rarity of the Pokémon. Now was not the time to properly enjoy the new experience, but she couldn't rightly stop her imagination from playing it out: The two most regarded Champions and their most powerful Pokémon stood face to face with one another for the first time ever. Cynthia could not deny the small part of her that wished it was in preparation for a battle.

_One year_, she promised herself, knowing that she could not afford the luxury of idle fantasy.

"Lead on," she prompted, mounting Garchomp's haunches with a friendly pat to the flank. "We'll follow."

"I'll try not to outpace you," Lance said, with a nod, as he did the same. She would have snorted derisively at the typical ace-trainer swagger, but he took off so quickly that if she'd blinked she might've been left with no idea where he'd went. He was nearly vanishing into the distant sky before she and Garchomp had left the ground. Her Pokémon was capable of aerial speeds too great for a human rider to withstand-Garchomp were called the Mach Pokémon for a very good reason—but she had to remember that there were no flying Pokémon that could rival a Dragonite's speed in all the world.

She felt a flutter rise in her that hadn't in many years, as her and Garchomp bore down with the intent to gain on Lance before they made it to the search point.

_One year from now._

* * *

A whole month or more had passed, now. Meowth wasn't exactly sure how many days. Jessie wasn't the type to mark on the walls, nor was she going let James do it. It was too much like defeat, she'd said, and she had always been an adapter. This situation was no different.

"Okay, how about _three_ packs of smokes," Jessie said, with a frown and a sigh. "I got 'em on me right now, so can we just make this happen? I really need that bottle, alright? How much could the warden possibly miss _one_ bottle?"

Meowth watched her from the doorway to the kitchen. It was rec-time, so they were pretty much free to go wherever. Jessie usually used this time to make arrangements, and he tagged along, since it was greatly preferable to watching James make a fool of himself out in the yard.

Jimmy wasn't having the best time of it, really. Meowth had grown up on the streets, so when it got right down to it, life on the inside wasn't so tough. Jessie, though, it was like she was born for this. She knew who to go to and who to avoid, who to sweet-talk and who to intimidate.

"Look, if you don't cough it up, I'm sure the bloc officer in west wing sure would be interested to know where his monthly allotment of uniform socks keeps vanishing off to, wouldn't he?" It had been James, actually, who had discovered the utilitarian use of socks in making a type of fermented wine the inmates lovingly called _Pruno_. Jessie said it tasted a lot like a vomit-flavored wine-cooler, but neither he nor Jimmy had felt up to trying toilet-liquor. None amongst the three would be particularly heartbroken were the commodity to dry up, though.

The kitchen-duty guys were in charge of making it, though, and they were likewise the most well-connected of all the prisoners. It hadn't taken very long at all for Jessie to figure that out, intelligent as she was. They had limited access, at least, to the shipment truck that went in and out of the facility, and that meant they were the purveyors of all things both coming into and going out of the prison. All the shipments were screened and checked, of course, so there was no way anything that might've been any use to escape or cause trouble with was going to get in, but, things that were already on their way in anyways, might slip into different hands than they were intended, so long as the correct palms were greased. Or you lit a fire under the right asses.

Jessie was surprisingly good at both. He didn't think it would be wise to mention how much she'd flourished, since she was like as not to bust him upside the melon for insisting such a thing, but even now she was digging down in the confines of her orange jumpsuit for the professed cigarettes. Evidently the guy she'd came to trade with had made good on his deal. Cigarettes were like gold bullion in this place, so whatever it was had to of been pretty good.

She likewise stuffed her new contraband down into her jumper, and met Meowth mid-stride in the hallway.

"Sometin' good 'den?" Meowth asked, plodding along casually.

Jessie shrugged in that way that she always did, as if a mother dealing with a child asking questions of a concept that was simply above him. "We'll see, won't we?"

Together they made their way back to join up with the third of their party before the top of the hour. He proved not to be in the work-room, which was wise, since Jessie had sworn that she'd beat him to a pulp if she caught him in there again.

A week ago, James had been in here, sewing at the machine, of all things. It wouldn't have been so bad, really, (even if it was hopelessly deluded) had it not turned out to be the same day that b-wing guys were scheduled to be in there. Much to Jessie's horror, they had overheard a warder refer to b-wing as 'the nonce wing', just that same day. By the time Meowth had gotten there, some grease-ball who called himself "Hung Harry" was standing along-side him, one hand laid solicitously on Jimbo's shoulder, while the blue-haired ex-Rocket unwittingly showed off the dress he'd been sewing together. He'd made it out of cotton sheaves he'd evidently found somewhere in the storage rooms adjacent to the boiler.

"I was thinking Jessie might like it!" he'd declared triumphantly. "She could wear it in a contest!"

"I was thinking _you_ wouldn't look half bad in it either," Harry commented, giving James a playful pat on the small of his back, in a way that made Meowth's skin crawl.

James, ever one to cross-dress, seemed to miss the undertones entirely. "You know, I _would. _Green always was my color."

It hadn't much to look at, but it was a herculean effort, in light of things. Just a simple green dress, with straight seams, and ribbed stitching. James was painstaking in his details, and as a tailor, he'd always been top-notch. Their disguises were always enough to fool the twerp, at least. Jessie may have been the mechanical brains of the operation, but Jimbo had his influences too. Their style was all his doing, no doubt about it.

Meowth had just been giving some frank consideration to the fact that Jim probably would've been able to pull the dress off, when Jessie had finally stormed in behind him. One look, and she smacked 'ol Harry's hand away with a gruff snarl, and practically dragged James out of the room so fast she'd taken a chunk of his hair out.

And that wasn't the half of it. Once they'd cleared the halls and made it back to their cell, Jimmy'd finally found a moment to offer it to her and explain what it was for. She'd popped him in the mouth for it. Hard, too, not just her typical physical abuse, but a real solid taste-of-blood, brain-rattling, wake-up slap. Then, she'd split the dress down the middle with a two-fisted rip, and thrown it out into the corridor.

"I'm not a coordinator anymore, and you're not at a day-spa retreat!" she'd spat. "We're going to be in here a long time, so it's best you get this stupid shit out of your head, now!" She'd then gave him a run-down of all the things she henceforth forbid him to do, and all the places she forbid him to go without them around, then threw herself onto the top bunk and rolled to face the wall.

James had kept to that, but the poor guy hadn't spoken a word for the rest of the day, or really anything of consequence to anybody since then, as far as he was aware. Jimbo would nod and give grunts of accord, but that was about it. This was more than just a little tiff.

"Ya know, you were pretty harsh ta Jimmy da otha' day, Jess."

Jessie winced and hissed through her teeth at him, obviously aware, but unwilling to admit it. She shook her head stubbornly. "He needs to wake up. Nobody in here is his pal."

_Harry looked like he wanted to be 'pals'_, thought Meowth, though he didn't dare utter the thought aloud. "Aren't we supposed ta be?"

Jessie snarled. In all honesty, she'd just wanted to make the point stick. She'd never meant to hurt his feelings the way she obviously had. She'd been pretty incensed at the time over the fact that some creep had just tried to put his mac down on James, and in close proximity as they were it was hard to give yourself time to calm down before you made rash choices.

Still, the dress was a painfully stupid idea, and Jessie was never going to admit that she had been wrong. It was better for James to be upset at her, than to keep fooling himself into believing that they were going to be out of here this time next week. There was no conviction yet, but scuttlebutt said that for conspiracy alone they were looking at ten years.

She would hold James together the best she could, because that was her responsibility. What she wouldn't do, was coddle him, or soothe every boo-hoo he had, just because he had them. She wanted him to understand that they called it doing _hard time _for a reason. Prison was going to change all three of them, no matter what she did, and James was apt to change most of all. She would make sure it didn't break him, but if she had to slap him around to toughen him up, it was better that then his misguided naivety leading to a buncha nonces trading his dainty ass around like a cock-sleeve.

Still, Jessie knew he was right. James was made of softer stuff than her and Meowth. Better bred stuff, really. It was easy to forget that James was from a much higher social caste than they were. Once, she'd resented him for it, but that was pointless. James was just James. Still, it almost didn't make sense how someone who'd come from everything had ended up on the same walk of life as someone like herself, who'd come from absolutely nothing, in the dregs of Team Rocket, still blew her mind.

She couldn't have imagined wanting to get away from someone so bad that she would throw away an inheritance like that. Just thinking about the amount of money James' family had made her feel like there were pokedollar signs showing in her eyes. His fiancée had stood as a fairly reasonable explanation, she supposed, but, truth be told, she was pretty sure she'd be willing to marry Jessibelle_ herself _if it meant getting her hands on that sort of dough.

Not that her own life hadn't been its own sort of downhill ride. It was just that James' had started so much higher. He didn't have the same low sensibilities. He'd never had to be wise to anybody's ulterior motives. That was the thing about ultra-rich people. They were abusive and cruel right out in the open, if Jessibelle was any indication. They didn't bother hiding it behind phony smiles, and nice words. That was why James didn't know any better.

Her snarl turned into a sigh under Meowth's observant eye. "Don't get cute. I'm just trying to keep him out of trouble."

Meowth only tutted. "Jimmy's a big boy, now, Jessie."

_Yeah,_ she thought_, _a big_, attractive, _and slightly_ effeminate _boy. "You know that's not the issue, here."

The cat-Pokémon rolled his shoulders, and took a moment to examine his claws, like a person disinterestedly inspecting their nails for defects. They'd filed his claws down when they'd taken them into custody. It was either that, or solitary confinement away from Jessie and James, so he'd made the sacrifice, but it still made him feel sour when he saw them. Unintentionally, he scowled. "I do. But does Jimmy?"

Jessie huffed in frustration, mistaking the frown for condemnation "If he doesn't, tough shit. This isn't exactly a picnic for me, either, Meowth."

"I get dat," Meowth offered. "But you said yaself we're gonna be in here a long time, right? Betta if we all undastand eachudda if we're gonna stick togedda'."

Jessie's gruffness finally caved in on itself and turned to a whine, as it often did when she could no longer reasonably be angry. This was the stage where most people admitted that they were out of line, Meowth supposed, but he wasn't sure that any of them really knew how to. "How am I supposed to do-o-o tha-a-at? She moaned, coming to a halt, arms hanging.

She looked lost. Meowth did not have to guess that she had no experience making apologies. He just shrugged though and tried to look unimpressed. "I'm guessing whatever ya got shoved down ya jumpsuit there is for Jimmy, right?"

Jessie looked awkward for a moment, but it was all the confirmation he needed. "Well 'den you're halfway 'dere."

Jessie's withering scowl told him that wasn't the part she was looking for help with. "I could help ya write Jimbo a letta' if ya too embarrassed to tell him."

"I'm not embarrassed—"

"You could start with "Dear Jimmy: Please don't misunderstand. I only slapped the taste outta ya mouth because I'm afraid dat you're just too pretty and trusting for the big house. "

"I'm NOT embarrassed!" Jessie continued to protest, ignoring him. They'd come to their cell-bloc, though, and only a few more strides were left before they came back to their own cell. This conversation was over.

"No reason I should make myself scarce, den?" Meowth asked leadingly, his arms crossed. He knew as well as she did that she would never open up enough to make peace with him if there was someone around to see her do it.

Her look was both pleading and loathsome. It said, plain as day: _"Don't make me hurt you."_

With a chuckle, he tucked both of his paws into his own miniature orange jumpsuit, and strode off in the opposite direction, to give the two of them some privacy. He'd been meaning to catch some TV before rec hour was over, anyways.

Standing back to her full height, Jessie plastered on her closest approximation of detached annoyance. After patting her jumpsuit to assure her peace-offering was still intact, she strode in with a severe gait, and stood by the foot of the bunk.

James was sprawled half off and half on the lower cot, both eyes following his fingertip as it spiraled lazily on the tile floor. He looked like he was trying to find some pattern in the chipped stone. He grunted. It meant he knew she was there, but it was not a hello by any stretch of the imagination.

"You look bored," she observed.

He did something that might've been a shrug. A slow-motion twitch of the neck and shoulder muscles on one side.

"James," she huffed. "Sit up, would you?"

He did as he was asked. James would always knuckle under. That was one of the flaws in his personality. He'd spent his whole early life doing as he was told by his parents, and so doing things he didn't particularly want to was ingrained in him. He would just shut down, and do it. There were times that it'd been invaluable to her agendas, since she was by and large the leader of the team. She made the calls, and delegated the unsavory tasks, more in spite of the other two than not. Meowth was a realist, and James was one of life's grin-and-bear-it types, so everything always worked out in the end.

This, though, she didn't like. Not anymore.

James sometimes showed these rare moments of true brilliance and insight, and she knew that it was simply not possible that he was some idiot savant. He had the brains and the courage somewhere, and by Arceus, she would find it. Or rather, she would force him to, even if it killed the both of them. James had his limits and she knew that his ability to take everything lying down without it wrecking him would not last ten years. His ability to think and take pride in himself, however infrequent, might.

She opened her mouth, curious to see if she could say those things to him, succinctly as that. They were the words she really needed him to hear, after all. She couldn't, though. Nothing came out of her mouth. Stubbornly, the words refused to work their way out of her brain, and onto her tongue. She closed it again and shook her head imperceptibly.

Maybe you had to be of better birth, to actually speak to someone that way. For her, it was never going to happen. Her typical brand of motivation wasn't going to work here, though, and so she, like him, was going to have to change.

She closed her eyes tightly, and forced them out painfully; as though passing a stone. "I'm, s-s-s-s-sorry I ripped the dress." she managed in a sort of half-yell, half-wheeze. It was hard for her. It really it was. Especially since she wasn't sorry at all, really. Ripping the dress was just the easiest thing to apologize for. Stupid and pointless though it might've been, it was a legitimately nice thing he'd been trying to do, and she had literally slapped him in the face for it.

James rolled his head around. He knew better than to nod like he'd expected the apology, and he certainly knew better than to act as though he was surprised by it (though it honestly wouldn't have been much of an act). He settled for body-language that made it seem like he was accepting. For James, the process was easy.

But for Jessie, it remained hard. She took him by the elbow, in spite of the fact that she really only wanted to shake him until his brains rattled, she pulled him a little closer. She needed him to show a little spine, at least; not just take her apology because it was easier than not taking it. "I was mad, and I lost my cool. Do you understand why?"

He nodded. They'd had to explain it six or seven different ways—and at one point, Meowth had expressed their need for anatomic puppets to act it out—but eventually he'd gotten the picture. It'd helped that they'd explained what nonce meant. It still gave him the creeps. Mr. Hung had seemed really nice!

"Do you really?" Jessie asked, her grip tightening on his elbow.

He frowned, and rolled his eyes, at her, "Because I'm an idiot."

_Yes_, she wanted to say, but "No," she began instead. The truth was somewhere in between.

James huffed, and pulled his elbow away, before she could explain it. "You sure treat me like one."

Jessie felt somehow elated and miserable. This was the direction she wanted the conversation to go, truthfully, but the things she would have to say were still quite painful. "I know, and I'm…" she clamped her eyes shut again.

"S-s-s-sorry," she hissed.

James just sighed, and it sort of made her feel worse. Was her sincerity really that phony that even James could tell she was faking it? In an instant of frustration, she threw away the faux-sensitivity, and slugged him hard in the arm. "Dammit, James! I don't want to see anything bad happen to you! Stop making me feel like an asshole for trying to protect you from yourself, when you're obviously too damn naïve to realize you're getting yourself into trouble! I'm just one person, and I can't be around to nanny over you all the time, and that pisses me off!"

He rubbed his arm, and looked back at her, his gaze shifting from surprise, to annoyance, before becoming a look of uneasy humor. "So, am I an idiot or not?"

She wanted to give him another good slap for that, but his mouth curled up at the edges, and she felt herself chortle in spite of her anger. That set James off to laughing, and soon she was following him. In no time at all she was giggling so hard she could barely breathe and she let out a tremendous snort that made James fall off the bunk in renewed cackling.

Now slightly embarrassed, she reached out and snatched ahold of him around the neck, and gave him a ferocious noogie. "You're an idiot alright," she snarled, choking off his laughter, _"_but you're _my_ idiot!"

"Ow!" he whined, pinned under her arm. She started grinding her knuckles in a little harder, since he was being such a big cry-baby, but he tried to wiggle a hand in between his face and her chest, which caused some very unusual sensations, to say the least. "There's something really hard in your overalls!"

She dropped him back onto the floor, and dismissed the blush on her face. "Oh," she remembered, "Uh, here. I got this for you."

Jessie plopped the bottle of cola into his outstretched hand, with a soft slap. She tried not to look like his laughter had infected her, and so she had to turn away from him a little when his eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas. James had told her and Meowth once that he'd drank enough soda to float an aircraft carrier. She could tell by the look on his face, that was probably true.

"Just don't try to save the bottlecap," she reminded him, knowing that he kept quite a collection. She hoped she didn't need to add on the unspoken fact that it would be a pointlessly long amount of time to hold on to such a keepsake, much the same as the dress. They both knew full well that such contraband, if found, would get them in heaps of trouble, moreso than they already were.

Now that she stopped to think about it, she wasn't sure how James was going to get the cap off in the first place. It wasn't a twist off, as far as she was aware. James evidently had some trick that he had learned in his youth, though, because soon, using a combination of his bunched sleeve, and the ball of his palm, the cap came off with an audiable "thunk." He held it in his thumb and forefinger and then tilted his hand over backwards by his ear to launch it at her with a snap of his fingers. She'd seen him do this before, actually, and so she flinched away. As it turned out, he was shooting it out across the hallway through their open cell-door. He must've done it really hard, because she heard it rebound perhaps 10 times, and a muted yelp as it finally collided with someone.

He smiled. An earnest smile and an innocent one, like only James really knew how to do. A long time ago, she had believed that it was because he'd never known any hardships; that he was a stupid rich-boy who'd never had to stand with his feet in the muck like she did. But that wasn't true, and it never really had been. James hadn't suffered in the way she had but he had suffered, and that was all relative. James, though, he was just one of those people that could shrug it off.

He was smiling right now, like all the shit they'd gone through in the past months, all their years and years of struggling and scraping by, and all those years before it, of misery he'd faced at the hands of his family and their arranged marriage, couldn't even lay a finger on him.

It was different than the face he made when he was just letting her boss him around, and pretending to be more or less jovial about the consequences. She knew that look very well, but she was glad that she knew this one, too. It made her feel a little envious of him, as she watched him. Sometimes she felt like all the mistakes and problems in her life haunted her every step, and she was lucky to shrug them off long enough to get a laugh out, before they fell back down on her shoulders. Hers went back a long way, after all. They started with being born. At least James had parents who cared about him, if only as the continuation of their dynasty. Supposedly her mother had been a Rocket Admin at one point, but fuck lot of good that'd done _her_. Miyamoto was gone, and she didn't even remember the lady!

She sighed and shook her head, as she watched James tilt back the soda bottle. Like him, she would have to find a way to live with what she had, in the here and now. James had that soda-pop, and couldn't be happier about it. She still had James and Meowth, and she could hold onto that in the same way. That's what they'd promised eachother, right?

He looked like he was gonna cry, when he took his lips off of it. She wouldn't have put it past him. He could get pretty emotional sometimes. "Thanks, Jess." He commented after a long reverent silence. "Want some?"

Jessie was honestly struck by his gratitude, but she was on the verge of deciding that she'd been sentimental enough for one day, Meowth around to see it or not. She snorted. "With all your backwash in it?"

She took it from his outstretched hand anyways, though she was mindful enough to wipe her sleeve across the rim before taking a drink. It was warm, but even so it was the best thing she'd tasted in a month. Next to the slap of grease and cup of water they got at meal time, it was liquid heaven. It beat the doors off of Pruno, that was for certain.

She wondered if she would forget, over time, what real food actually tasted like, since the best you could hope for here was grisly soup and weak saccharine tea. Little reminders like this weren't so bad. She tried not to take another swallow, since she'd meant it as a gift for James, but he seemed not to mind.

She passed it back, and burped respectfully against the back of her hand. "S'good."

He polished it off, not bothering to cleanse the lip of her saliva.

A knock at the open door left him choking, and trying to stuff the empty bottle under his pallet, and her reeling to see who it was. Thankfully, it was only Meowth. She was about ready to tell him straight off for startling them, but then she saw how stricken he looked.

"What's the matter?" she demanded instead.

Meowth took a moment, but then responded. "Just hoid' on da news dat the league is lookin' into a more t'ourough investigation of da PLF. You's two know what dat means."

James shook his head, so Jessie filled in the blanks for him. "It means our case will be reopened."

"That's good!"

"But it also means that we can expect another visit from that hard-boiled detective," Meowth countered, overtop James' rejoicing.

"That's bad!" James moaned.

"But we may have another chance to plead our case!"

"That's good!"

"But we was just patsies before. If 'dey 'tink we're actual conspiracy suspects, they're probably going to separate us."

"That's bad!"

"It won't matter, because we aren't," Jessie shot back. "As long as the heat is off their necks, the team should help us out of here. Even if they do separate us, it can't possibly be for long."

"That's good!" James said reflexively, though like the others, the idea of taking help from the team, after they had essentially dumped them in here as a matter of convenience, stuck badly in his craw. "Or…is that bad?"

The all plopped down then on James' bunk, and sat with their chins in their palms. It was a strange thing, really, to be on the brink of celebration and depression all at once.

* * *

They had been searching for hours, with little result. It was getting close to dusk, as the two of them spiraled over just a very small patch of the nearly ten thousand hectares of forest in the rural northern stretch of Kanto. The last known location had yielded little to no helpful information, being that they'd gone on from there in a straight line nearly forty miles with no sign of their objective whatsoever.

With their immense speed atop the two dragons, the question of logistics was no longer trying to find a way to cover such an immense area, but rather trying to find something as small as a person within something so big as to obviate the use of hyperbole. They'd swooped low to check out a few interesting features in the canopy below, but every time they ostensibly seemed to be trees downed by lighting, or wind, or rotting, rather than evidence of a crash sight.

"Why would he have come all the way out here?" she yelled across to him, her temper waning as they corkscrewed around one another. "It doesn't make sense."

"What do you mean?" he hollered back, as he turned inward, and tried to close the distance.

"I mean—" she shouted, but then geared back her volume, as he cut an arching spiral to come alongside her in just a split second, surprising her again, with Dragonite's incredible acceleration. "I mean that if what you said earlier about Silver, uh…"

"He's hard-headed," Lance acknowledged.

Cynthia nodded. "Yes, If what you said earlier about him is true, then why would he of gone this far out of his way, if he'd found what you believe he was looking for?"

Lance worried at his mouth with a palm. "He met with overwhelming force? He was left with no other choice?"

Cynthia shook her head. "You and Blaine both pegged him as someone with more guts than brains. Why would he have cut and run at all? I mean, you know him better than I did, does fleeing this far seem like something he'd have done?"

Lance considered it, then shook his head. "You think this maneuver was tactical, rather than elusive?"

Cynthia grimaced. She didn't want to say was that what she'd been getting at was that Silver, if he had any of the same characteristics as overly-gutsy trainers she'd known throughout her career, or even half as much over-blown confidence as Lance himself seemed to have, he likely hadn't made the decision to beat a retreat at all, and had either been driven to do it, or picked a moment far too late, and hadn't made it very far because of it. He certainly wouldn't have kept running well after the threat was gone, and she doubted that anyone who'd done as much damage to the Battle Tower as they'd seen had given much effort toward dogged pursuit.

Then again, the threat of exposure might've led to a very tenacious hunt, by that same token. Still, she couldn't believe that someone with that much firepower under their control had taken long to dispose of one trainer, who was like as not perfectly willing to slug it out with them, childhood friend of Lance's or not.

Still, she had to say so. "We're looking too far from the last point of contact. We know that the damage that destroyed the locator occurred there, and we know that your friend probably wasn't the type to run from a fight, even if he was losing it, so we have to assume that if he was downed that it will be closer to that point. We should go to ground-level and search a conical area, five kilometers maximum, to the north of it. I'm guessing that's our best bet."

If she'd have seen the look on his face just a moment sooner, Cynthia knew she'd have tried to say it in a way that didn't seem like she was calling Lance foolish; or at least that she wasn't condemning his friend. She wouldn't have so acidly implied by her tone that him having assumed through optimism that his friend was still perfectly fine, and had taken a carefree glide into the far reaches of the region after trading blows with terrorists was naïve.

Not more than a day ago, she'd have said just that, and she'd have said it bluntly and without remorse, circumstances be damned. Now she found herself struggling to maintain eye-contact with him.

An expression she'd never seen Lance make and that honestly, looked very poor on him, revealed itself. Cynthia couldn't identify it as anything she'd ever felt, but she found that she was slightly disgusted by herself when she saw it, which was a feeling she was neither familiar nor enamored with. Outside of herself at that moment, she'd have chastised Lance for showing such a lapse of calm. Champions should conduct themselves better. In the here and now, she couldn't blame him.

If it was anger at her, she wouldn't blame him. If it was fear, or guilt or sorrow, she couldn't blame him either. Even if it was totally unfounded, or unreasonable, she could no more say how she would have felt in his place. The truth was that he would've been fine, knowing that he was only going to find his friend, say, fishing at some nearby stream, camping out in the deep wood of Northern Kanto. Since Blaine and Cynthia both had all but told him he was like as not to find his friend dead, there was honestly nothing the man should've dreaded more than to start looking somewhere he might've actually found his friend.

Still, he had to do it. And she would help him. That's what she'd promised she'd do—not just to him, but to Charles as well. She'd been judgmental of this man for his entire tenure as Champion, and now here she was following him towards what was likely to turn out to be the scene of his friend's murder, and therein was the source of her sudden self-loathing.

Both of them were expected to behave as though they were above reproach, and had their own ways of doing it. Hers was to remain cool and reserved, in elegant superiority. His was to be casual and glib—almost lazy, as though life was simply no trouble to him. It felt like, in her own vain attempt to preserve her pretenses, by wholly embracing it, she'd mistaken his guise for truthful nature, as well.

Lance, deep down, however casual, or informal, or nonchalant he might've seemed, was a man of passion, just as any Champion must be, and she felt foolish for not having noticed that burning in his eyes for what it was. Lance had somehow suspected from the jump how he would find his friend, and he'd asked her out here, more than anything, because he just hadn't had the nerve to face that possibility alone. He was a human being, just like she was underneath it all, and he'd turned to her, just he'd said he'd desired to, without reservation, and she'd spit in his face for it. He was at something of a loss for the first time in a long time, so, she did something not very Champion-like, since no other course seemed correct.

She swallowed her pride. It felt like there was no way it would fit down her throat at first, but she managed it.

The art of apology was something that didn't cross culture gaps well. Sinnohans and Kantonese spoke the same language, but their customs were widely varied, and such often led to misunderstandings. A good example of this sort of thing, and one that she had learned quite recently, was that the Unovans were very profuse and heavy-handed with their apologies, incorporating self-admonishments and gratuitous gestures with their atonements—yet strangely, this sort of thing was only appropriate between Unovans themselves. If a foreign concession was to be delivered in such an ostentatious manner, even in the spirit of absolute authenticity, a Unovan would just as soon assume they were being made fun of, and it would likely do more to sour the confrontation than salve it.

By contrast, in Sinnoh, the apologetic approach was casual and understated. If a person was out of line, they would be very likely to offer apology as a token gesture, but then the burden would've then been on the plaintiff to accept the apology with gratitude, or like as not, dismiss the grievance as trivial to begin with. That would not work here, though.

Kantonese people were different than others, because as a people, they relied on a very strong traditional history of feudal lordship, in which, above all, it was the victor who decided what was right and proper. Because of this, for the Kantonese, an apology—a true apology—was not about providing concession for the person with the grievance, but rather about admitting that you were wrong. It was not required to prostrate yourself, or provide lavish accouterments to the profession of regret, but there was a definitive sense that you had to admit that you were the one at fault, and make no excuses for that.

So that was what she did. She didn't excuse her ego or her stubbornness. She didn't call to light that she'd only recently gained the respect for him that he likely deserved, and was struggling to come to terms with it; because that was certainly no fault of his. Even if she didn't like his slick attitude and his informal, nonchalant way of dealing with everyone, and even though she found his comings and goings with the G-Men a strange sort of circus-act at best, she was wrong. Whether she was nearly ten years his senior or not, he still deserved more consideration from her than she was giving him, and she was still wrong. "It was thoughtless of me to imply…" she trailed away, not quite willing to give absolutely definition to the implication. "I misspoke. It was wrong of me to say that, and I am very sorry."

She didn't bow, but she did nod in polite deference, as she'd seen Koga do. It seemed right.

Lance felt his displeasure evaporate. In fact, de had to call upon all his wealth of tact to hold back a laugh, which was saying much, because he had a truly massive reserve of social adroitness. The apology was almost text-book, to the point that he was sure it would've set off a long chain of polite niceties and respectful disregarding if someone older, like Agatha had been around to see it. Bruno would've put his face in the dirt, surely, so moved would he have been by the display. Koga might even have smiled, cold Qwilfish that he was. Himself, he just wanted to guffaw.

In truth, Lance had watched her reading a Kantonese travel-guide she'd likely obtained in Viridian Airport just before the meeting this morning. He'd watched her read the whole thing cover-to-cover, actually. She'd sat there leafing through it, wetting thumb and forefinger with each page, pouring over cultural factoids and traditions of the region. He'd considered asking her then if she was a person who enjoyed foreign travel, just as he was considering now, asking her if she'd read up on her delivery in that particular pamphlet.

To her credit, her apology was quite culturally relevant—and rather expertly delivered, seeing as how they were both hundreds of feet off the ground. She'd done it just exactly like her guide had told her, he was sure, and it'd been near perfect—or at least, it would have been. Her calculations were off by just a hair, though, since Lance wasn't Kantonese at all. He was from Blackthorn, like his cousin, high up in the mountains of Johto!

Still, it would've been a fools venture to inform her of that, or make some attempt at mocking her above her notice, by reciprocating her apology in an equally ill-informed format. Cynthia was not a slow-witted person by any stretch of the imagination, and honestly, he did appreciate her trying to make amends with him, whatever unnecessary trappings might've accompanied the attempt. He hadn't lied when he'd professed great respect for her.

Thus, he resisted the urge to slap on a tacky accent, and profess the unworthiness of his lowly self, to the regal "Shirona-heika!" Instead, he locked eyes with her, and did his best to smile in an honest way. He had to be careful about it, because sometimes his smiles seemed to default to a self-satisfied variety, and that was not his intent either.

"Cynthia, there's no need for apology," he conceded. Though his smile faded with the acknowledgement, it was only because of what that truly meant; he was quite sincere. "You're right. We probably won't find him way out here."

Cynthia was used to dealing with people who were either several tiers down the league ladder, or Charles, who was the sole figure in the world she still had to treat as a superior. It was as though her world was mostly without peers, and up until very recently, to be honest, she'd not even considered Lance among them, so it was very odd to accept such consolations from him. She took his cue, though, and wisely shut her mouth, rather than come right out and admit everything she'd been arguing with herself over the man, for the past few hours.

She felt as though she was blushing intensely, but she dealt with it in a manner befitting her rank as Champion. She locked her gaze to his and did not look away.

As things which did not belong often were, it was hard not to see the dread in his eyes. Still, Lance's charm was more than powerful enough to make it seem like an offhanded worry. He made an according gesture with his free hand, as though offering her something. "You lead. I will follow."

When the tension eased between them, after a moment, they nodded to each other and cut a roundabout. After many long minutes of flight at high speeds, they dropped elevation and took for the floor of the forest, in the spot she'd prescribed. Gliding in and dismounting for a search conducted better on foot, sure enough, much to her own dread as well the signs appeared.

Too low beneath the canopy to be spotted from the air, a great swath of low-lying limbs had been taken out, shattered from otherwise healthy trunks. The green wood was easy to spot, still dripping sap and clogging the lower boughs with detritus.

Lance did something she could've only described as a serious lapse in character. He crossed one arm over his chest, and set the hand of his opposite to his mouth. From this pose he did not falter. She guessed it to be his worried face; though on anyone else it might've passed for a flavor of boredom. In the perpetually-smiling, always relaxed spectrum of expressions she'd known Lance to show, however, he may as well have been screaming and ripping his hair out.

Together, they followed the course of the disaster, each of them keeping to their own silence until it became too much to bear for Cynthia.

"Will you tell me a little bit about him?" Cynthia urged, even if it was only to distract him from the path of devastation they followed. "About your friend?"

He looked like he was having a hard time remembering in light of what was undoubtedly just a bit further on, so she prompted him. "How did you meet?"

Lance's lifted his hand from his mouth to speak, but did not completely lower it. "Silver, Clair and I grew up together in Blackthorn City," he explained, then paused. "He was like my big brother, really. We looked up to him. Clair won't admit it now, of course, but there was a time she was dead set on marrying Silver, once she got old enough to elope. Says it was a silly girl's crush." He came to a halt and betrayed a wisp of a chuckle, but his face did darken afterwards, and he set to rubbing his mouth when they came to a collapsed thicket, splattered visibly with dark fluid.

She didn't think it was blood, but she couldn't be sure. Beyond it, there was only the sound of a coursing brook, and the long, impenetrable shadows of dusk, but the sight itself seemed ominous enough.

"Tell me more about him." Cynthia insisted, but he strode briskly ahead. Unthinking, she protested; "Stop, Lance!" She grabbed the Kanto Champion by the cape, and he spun on her, eyes lit with anger. "Just wait here," she pressed, cutting off his rebuke. "He wasn't my friend. It'll be better if you let me go. I'll come back out and tell you one way or another, okay?"

The flames in his eyes died away, but the poor man kept worrying at his mouth with that hand, as though he would eventually find a way to lock it up tight, or else smear them together such that they could not come apart and betray that sound that wanted to come up his throat. He shook his head, and forced out a denial. "No," he managed, making it sound half-way sturdy, even.

"Lance, please," she insisted, trying to keep a lead on him and usher him backwards, as she practically dragged him into the thicket. Realizing that he wasn't going to stop, she threw herself out in front of him. She really didn't know why she felt the need to defend him from the sight they would surely see, but she coursed out ahead all the same.

When Lance grabbed hard at her arm, she realized that now she was the one he was trying to stop. When she looked away from his hand, clasped her wrist, and back out ahead, she saw why.

She stopped only a hair's width from falling into an open mouth full of angry, jagged teeth, nearly as wide open as the full length of her arm.

Lance was a fair deal stronger than even her most steadfast insistence, fortunately, and so he jerked her backwards three full strides, as the neck the mouth was attached too extended in a lunge, and those powerful jaws snapped shut with killing intent just where she'd once stood. Disgracefully, she fell on her rump, and she meant to spring back to her feet, and send forth Garchomp again, to do battle with the Pokémon attacker, but Lance stood in front of her, arms spread wide in symbolic protection.

She was sure, if the toothsome Pokémon wished, it could've simply bit him clean in two, and his tough-looking stance would've meant nothing, and so to her the gesture seemed more foolish than brave. Still, Lance was a Dragon trainer, and had the special Blackthorn glamour when it came to commanding his specialty type.

"Salamence!" he yelled, voice unafraid. "Salamence, you know me!"

Cynthia thought that was a curious thing to say, until she had a moment to think about it. Was this Silver's Pokémon? She gave some thought to clambering back to her feet, and stepping out from behind Lance, in an effort to show that she was in no serious need of his protection, but the Salamence seemed as though it might've been partially blinded, and so it was probably a poor idea to creep outside its periphery in such a manner, or make any sudden moves that didn't seem discretionary. She stayed where she was, and tried not to feel humiliated.

If the Salamence did recognize him, it was grudgingly. The teeth were still on full display, and though Lance didn't do anything as self-confident as reach out and touch the angry dragon-type, he did lower his arms, slowly to his side. "What happened, Salamence? Where is Silver?"

"I'm right here."

And suddenly, there he was. Having had no reason to expect that Silver would draw that sharp of a contrast to Lance himself, she found herself surprised by just how different a man he actually was, compared to the expectations she'd had in place.

While Lance was tall, and straight, Silver was simply enormous—maybe not so bulky or well-constructed as Bruno, but easily a head taller and if possible, more severe-looking than Lieutenant Surge. His hair was a full, uncharacteristic gray, though he couldn't have been any older than she was, leading her to believe that was his natural born hair-color. He didn't appear to have any of the natural charisma that Lance exuded, just by his gruff stance, and lack of acknowledgement, but she hadn't really expected otherwise with the way Blaine and Lance had talked about him.

It took her a long moment of glancing over him, to see the lumpy jacket bundled in his arms, cradled protectively to his huge chest. She looked back up to his eyes, so dark brown that they seemed coal-black, and could easily see the rawness in them.

He looked at her, and then back to Lance. "Get out of our way."

Lance balked in confusion, and did no such thing. "What's going on? What happened? You need to get to a Pokémon center!"

Silver didn't respond, at first, but his Salamence pulled back more gum, to reveal even more of its broken, yet still razor-sharp, teeth, and made one probationary step forward. With it, Lance took one step back, yet he did not stand aside.

"I don't know," Silver said, finally. "When I know, you'll know. But just..." He coughed, as if to hide something in his tone. "Just move."

Cynthia, knowing Lance would not soon step to either side, and not wishing to be trod over, slowly rose, trying to seem as though she were not threatening in the slightest. "Silver, if you'll just tell me what's going on, I—"

"GET OUT OF MY WAY!"

Lance stubbornly held his ground, but it was a pointless effort. All his charm and stature didn't mean a damn thing next to the huge bruiser of a man's raw strength and ire, though. Lance tried to grab for his friend, to steady him and was lucky that the Salamence didn't take one of his arms off for the sudden move. The resultant scuffle proved to be a short affair, though, as Silver dispatched the champion with a one-handed shove to the chest that sent him bowling over backwards, and eventually into a heap against her legs.

She barely managed to maintain her footing, and leered daggers at the tremendous man. No matter whose friend he was, this guy not just being rude, but he was seriously playing with fire if he thought he could just rough the two of them up without consequences. She palmed the ball inside her frock, making ready to level a threat, but she stopped dead when she saw it.

She only saw it for a second as he passed, its tiny hooves rocking in keeping with the man's steps as she shouldered past them, head lolling; its eyelids nearly shut, as if on the verge of an awakening that would never happen. Still, it was enough to reach into her chest and clench down hard on her heart. Cynthia had seen much in her life, and throughout her journeys as a trainer, but she had never seen death in person, until that moment. It struck her like a blow, and left her reeling. Both of her hands flew to her mouth, and her body went rigid.

She felt her legs wither beneath her, as Silver left them there, his head hung low, face tight. Somewhere far away, she was mortified that she was losing her composure in front of Lance, and that alone must've corked the tears from spilling out, even as she covered her quivering mouth. It had just been such a pitiful and morose sight, and she was rendered so impotent before the presence of death, that she felt helpless as all must in the face of mortality.

She didn't bother to wrench away, as Lance finally managed to right himself and clasped her shoulders. "Arceus, it was so tiny, and helpless," she babbled, as the Kanto champion looked past her towards his departing childhood friend, and she faced the ground between her knees, trying not to whimper audibly. "How could anybody do such a thing?"

When Silver and his monstrous Pokémon had stalked out of sight and hearing, Lance turned to her directly, and helped her to her feet. She regained herself, as she stood, but she still did not shrug him away.

The walked quietly back toward the clearing from which they'd com, and it was halfway there that Cynthia finally realized that she was now holding Lance up as much as he was holding her up. She looked at him, and then she knew why.

She'd stopped herself from letting out tears, too proud even to let herself have that reaction to death. Lance, seemed to be doing just the same, trying to keep the moisture in his eyes from leaking down his cheek. For a moment, she found it rather unbecoming, thinking it relief at having found his friend, and finding the emotional reaction rather girlish. Lance destroyed that presumption too, however.

"He's trying not to blame me." Lance said, stopping to take a palm to his face, and clear himself up. He let out just one more saddened cough, however, before he managed it. He'd sent Silver off on this mission, and it had cost the man dearly. That blame had to rest somewhere. He knew he had no right to complain, since he'd forced Scott to do the same, but it still hurt.

A certain warmth towards Lance had grown over the last day, and so she did not feel at all bothered when she reached to his arm, and gave it a confirming grasp. "Lance," she began, taking the full measure of him. "We have to make the hard decisions. They're not always going to be cut and dry."

He didn't seem satisfied at all by that response, but she wasn't quite finished yet. "Neither of us is as strong as our positions have made us believe, in some regards, yet both of us, in other ways that our titles have made us forget, are stronger that we believe. We must make those the strengths we utilize, moving ahead. If what Charles believes is true, then the threat from the PLF is only beginning. Things could get much harder moving forward, and we have to be ready for that."

Lance seemed to restore himself at those words, erecting himself tall and proud yet again. The guilt was not gone, she could see, but he had to set it aside for the time being. When the transformation was complete, she matched him, inch for inch, and they seemed to forget what had just occurred. Once more they were the two champions, and not at all the emotionally ragged duo that had left the thicket.

"Will you continue to work with me, as an outside agent?" Lance asked, voice lapsing again into informality.

Pride and superiority resumed, she snorted. "You're asking to be one of your G-Men?"

Lance shook his head, and sent out his Dragonite, making ready to depart. "No. I'm asking you to work as my partner. To help me lead the G-Men." He needed eyes in other regions, particularly those most distant, as Cynthia's was.

The Sinnoh champion smiled wryly, as she produced the poke ball that contained her Garchomp. "Only if you stop calling them that."

It was Lance's turn to snort. "No way. 'G-Men' is awesome. What would you call them, 'C-Men', or something?"

She didn't want to laugh, because the joke was petty, childish and something a Champion should not at all take amusement in, not to mention being at her expense. Still, she did it anyways, and in spite of the hurt inside them both, they were sniggering about it, all the way back to Indigo Plateau.

* * *

It had been a long day, but Ash gnawed on the inside of his mouth, as he laid awake. It was raining outside, but that should not have stopped the DI who came storming in at the usual time, to wake them all up. It was still dark out, naturally, but someone always came in at four-thirty in the morning and started howling down their necks. He knew it was that time already, because he'd been managing to wake up just a few minutes before that actually happened, every day now. He'd become conditioned to it. He figured he couldn't have been the only one, yet strangely, he seemed to be the only one who hadn't woken up. Maybe that wasn't the case, though. Maybe the rain had woken him up.

Something was on his mind, though, and so he didn't immediately consider the unusual nature of it all, nor did he fall back to sleep.

Ash had been called thick-headed a lot in his life, and he was beginning to figure that was true. He was thick, but what he was not, was stupid. He knew well enough that Melody had asked him out. He wasn't actually sure what that meant from a practical standpoint, but he understood what it meant generally. She liked him, and not just in a friendly way.

That made him feel giddy, in certain respects. It wasn't like anybody had ever come right out and said that they'd been attracted to him, before. Well, not in any way that wasn't underhanded. He'd gotten that sort of vibe before, of course, it was just that nobody had ever come out and said it to his face. He could tell that Melody was sincere and that was new and exciting, and it made his blood rush.

But did that mean he liked Melody too? He wasn't sure.

He was willing to admit that he had and still did think she was cute. She wasn't especially attractive in the way that Giselle was, although by that same argument, she was also not manipulative or self-important the way Giselle was either. Truthfully, physical looks only meant so much to him, though. On the inside she was confident and self-assured, and she had as much spunk as anybody could, though. He found those things more attractive than any facial trait or tint of skin, hair, and eye.

In other, less superficial respects, this ordeal greatly consternated him, however. He didn't have a strong grasp on the mechanics of the thing, but he'd been all over the place on his journeys and he'd seen a lot of other relationships form and dissolve in that time, whether on accident or on purpose. He mostly tried to ignore the lovey-dovey crap and he'd always treated Brock's womanizing, and Misty's romanticizing delusions with mild reproach, but he'd still seen enough to know that the things that held people together had to be more than sparks of attraction, and feelings of respectful awe.

Well, he supposed it helped, but he knew that a lot more had to go into it than that, and timing was perhaps the most crucial element. He was no expert, but he'd watched Brock crash and burn perhaps a thousand times, trying to sweep girls off their feet and he had to believe that it was because he poured on too much, far too soon.

Still, he didn't know enough about it make guesses concerning Melody though. If she said that was what she wanted, he could only assume that it was true. People knew their own hearts better than he ever could and she seemed like she'd grown out of the capricious nature of her early youth, so he could only assume that she'd thought it over. Her speech didn't seem like the sort of thing most people would have the guts to say right off the top of their head, truthfully. He knew he probably wouldn't have, anyways.

The Corps had given him much insight into the things that propelled him, even if it was by shearing away most of what obscured it by force. He knew that as soon as he was out of this place, he was going to go flying like a steel ball from a tightly pulled slingshot and he wasn't one-hundred percent sure where that would take him. Around Kanto, he knew, for he would certainly have to take on the remaining gym-leaders to ensure league eligibility at years end, but as to what else that would entail, exactly, he couldn't be sure. All he knew was that he was so desperate to be gone from here that he was practically going to explode already, and there was still a week and a half left to go in their training. After that, he would throw himself back into his journey, and nothing would stop him. He couldn't stop and he couldn't slow down—not for anything—not if he wanted to get this journey back on the rails.

Knowing that, he wasn't sure that now was the right time to have amorous feelings for someone. Especially Melody.

Not that there was anything wrong with her. It was just that honestly, Melody was a very amateur trainer, trying to fill very large shoes and what was more, she was doing it for very traditional, and culturally important reasons. That meant that she had a lot on her plate that she needed to deal with aside from just him, if she wanted to accomplish her goals, regardless if he was what had kick-started her in the first place or not. His goal was Indigo Plateau; hers, no matter how circuitous, was Shamuti Island. Her home.

He didn't think that her goals had to be mutually exclusive from her romantic designs, but if she wanted those romantic designs to fall upon him, then he was sure she was investing herself into something that was bound to disappoint her. He didn't know how long she planned to be kicking around Kanto, but he was sure that it wouldn't be a whole year.

Even if she did, his life was by necessity geared towards a more personal end right now, and it just would not facilitate the addition of another person's needs. Hell, it didn't seem to support his, most of the time. Thus far on his journey he had demonstrated that he could not adequately find the emotional sustenance he needed to get by on his own, without duress, much less be supportive of someone else who was just learning to put one foot in front of the other as a trainer.

He made a face in the dark. Was he seriously going to have the "it's not you, it's me," conversation? Not to mention the fact that the best reason he'd been able to come up with was that he didn't have it in him to split time between trying to make her a better trainer, and making himself one. It made him feel a little bit like a douchebag, actually.

Melody was a really cool person and even if he hadn't known her for the longest time. Bumping into her all those years ago had a profound effect on the course of his life, even if the actual collision, so to speak, had been momentary.

She totally had the wrong idea about him and Misty, but then again, most people seemed to. He shook his head against the pillow, and made an even worse face. Seriously, what the hell was with that?

Ash liked it when decisions were simple and the implications behind them were the same. The problem was, he didn't think this really had a simple answer. In the end it as just a yes or no, of course, but there seemed like there was just so much more to it. You couldn't just throw someone's feelings back in their face, even if you didn't have a matching set, and you couldn't respond the way they wanted just to avoid upsetting them, not over such a thing as this. Ash was a firm believer in the power of a white lie, but there were some things you just didn't do.

He'd never had to let someone down gently, though, and that was entirely untried and unbidden territory. His features coalesced into a frown again. He didn't want to believe that there was no right way to go about it, but, if there was one, he sure as hell didn't know what it was…

He would've slapped his hand over his eyes, right then, had an explosion of movement and sound from his left not nearly thrown him out of bed.

"Everyone get up, now," howled a DI, "there's been a break in!"

Ash felt a spike of sudden fear, as any might upon hearing such a thing, and his hand swung to the upright of the bed by pure reflex. When it slapped into the post, feeling not even the edge of his belt, that fear turned to stark confusion, and when he looked and saw that it was gone from where he'd hung it, that confusion flash-melted through the colder spectrum of emotion until it reached an explosive boil.

Team Rocket hadn't been on his mind of late and honestly it had been almost too long since he'd last seen them. He supposed he should've expected this to happen eventually, but that hardly fought back the anger. Why couldn't those three dolts just leave well enough alone? He was going through enough without them trying to get their hands on his Pokémon. Especially with such a wedge already driven between him and Pikachu, he couldn't handle this right now.

How the hell had they gotten in here, anyways? What kind of nerve did you have to have to sneak onto a Pokémon Corps base? More than those three had, for sure. Either that, or Team Rocket had gotten a whole lot dumber than the last time he'd seen them. Hadn't he done enough to make peace with them? He'd given them almost all his money, and all he'd asked in return was a ride. Was it too much to ask for a little reprieve? At least until this shit was over!

What kind of miserable friend would he have seemed like to Pikachu, if he let his best friend go into poke ball storage, which he despised, only to emerge again in the hands of thieves, while he'd laid there like an idiot dreaming about girls? He could not allow that to happen.

He couldn't! He just couldn't!

He hadn't realized how fast he'd bolted, even as inhibited and under-dressed as he was. He'd not allowed for pants, even, only leapt into his boots on his way out the door. He'd not waited for direction, but instead, hauled off in blind pursuit. He was, even now, barreling through the brush, crouched low to give himself extra slack enough for a stunted dash. Clad in only boxers and tank-top, he felt like he was moving faster than his training had ever yet forced him to, with none of the fatigue.

A fallen tree blocked his path, and he leapt it. A ledge of earth reared up before him, and he climbed it. A narrow creek cut of his way, and he splashed through it as though it were never there, manacles be damned.

There was nothing at all that could've possibly guided him, and nothing at all that could've possibly given him reason to pursue in this direction, in the dark of stormy night as it was, yet he thought he could sense someone out ahead of him, tromping and splashing, as though trying to get away.

He couldn't hear it or see it, but he felt it all over his body, in the same way that the unknown had come to him in the depths of mount moon. His hairs stood on end, and even banging on all cylinders his muscles did not feel their exertion. He felt only a slick, oily sensation as adrenaline oozed under his skin, making him feel frictionless and in perfect balance, like a well-lubricated machine.

His physique felt like an after-thought, because it was something deeper that pulled him along. His chest twisted and tightened, like someone was wringing his heart with both hands, and just one more twist, just one more inch, and it would pop. That feeling made him want to cry, and to scream in pain and fear, but at the same time it made him want to fight harder than he ever had, to do anything he could. Deeper than panic, deeper than urgency, it was a true imperative.

Do or die.

If he didn't catch up, if he didn't get Pikachu back, if he didn't have his Pokémon in his hands soon—damn soon—then he knew that he would expire. Even if he didn't fall right down into the mud and die, struck lifeless by his own failure, he would wish he had.

He did not know whether it was that realization itself that made him gain ground, or simply the perfect motions that came with it, but soon he was alongside them, and then he was circling around in front of them, and when he finally could see them, and he finally could hear them, he was bothered not at all that it was a very large man with an R on his chest, and not the Team Rocket he was used to dealing with at all. The bulging bag that suggested hundreds of poke balls coiled about one another on belts was all that concerned him.

Like that, Ash came out of the woods, half-naked and mud-covered, not knowing or caring what to say.

He thought the words would come to him as he held out his hand, and walked steadily towards the thief, that surely something righteous and vital would come from his lips. Instead, there was this hot, uncomfortable feeling that blocked it away, and sealed his throat. His thoughts, not just his words became less collected as his heartbeat escalated, and his impulses became disjointed and wild. He realized that he could barely breathe, but he didn't care.

He would get Pikachu and the rest of his Pokémon back.

The man, bedecked in ski-mask started suddenly at the sight of him, then regained his composure. That was what was proper of course, since Surge had put Baily in charge. No matter how stunned he was to see a trainee out here, practically waiting for him, when he'd had a ten minute head-start, this was all part of an exercise and he still had to play his role properly.

"Get the fuck out of here, kid," he snarled, trying his best to hide his stereotypically Vermillion accent.

The trainee just kept coming on, stunted pace getting more rapid as he closed, hand held out, as if waiting for a gift. Baily tried to identify him, through the caked mud, and besotted as he was by rain. He thought for a moment that he was looking at Ketchum, but he'd grilled Ketchum enough to know that the kid had brown eyes, not blue.

He decided that if he had to, he'd just fight his way through. He wasn't going to let the exercise come to an end this quickly, no matter what. It wasn't like the kid could fight back against him, without Pokémon. He reached for the poke ball that had his Joltik in it, and hurled it.

The ball never made it where it was going. He'd meant for the thing to come open at the trainee's feet—Joltik weren't very big, but one hit with that Electroweb and you weren't going anywhere!—but evidently this kid had been watching closely when Surge had done his demonstration last week.

Instead of falling to the dirt and expelling his Pokémon, the spinning poke ball was caught in a sharply extended palm. Hard fingers wrapped around it, clenching it shut with a fizzle and hiss, rather than allowing it to burst open with a pop. Thus rendered useless, the trainee stood that much closer with the poke ball in his hand, now seeming to have one of his Pokémon to negotiate ransom upon, and not having missed a stride. He'd closed within fifteen feet, now.

Baily couldn't have told anyone exactly why he took a step back then. He shouldn't have been afraid. He was a grown man, after all! Something about those blue eyes, though, was beginning to unnerve him. It was almost like they gave off their own light in the dark of the woods! How else was he actually seeing them? He redoubled his nerve and stepped forward again, resolving to simply physically crash through him if he didn't stand aside. At nearly double the height and weight of his aggressor, he inflated his chest. He didn't bother to hide his accent this time. "Stand aside!"

Still that hand was held out to him, still those eyes beamed out, blue and bright as police lights, and still, the trainee came with them, straight on. Left with no choice, Baily bulled forward and swung hard. Trainees had to know what it was like to deal with the real thing, after all. It was nobody's fault if a few of these guys got brained during Corps Training.

A full set of four massive knuckles slammed into Ash's forehead, and Bailey felt relief for a moment as those blue eyes rolled up and became fully white. The trainee reeled and stumbled, and looked like he was about to collapse, but somehow, he recovered.

The blue eyes rolled back into place, and with them, came something else. Something more than primal. He'd seen that look, over the years, helping Surge run this camp: the look that took over a trainee's face as they tapped into that deeper, more instinctual self. This was different though, and bigger. It seemed like all the primeval fires of the world burned in those eyes, and it was like looking into the gaze of some earth-leveling titan, who'd ruled creation in the chaotic times before gods, Pokémon and men. Before the boy had seemed very small indeed, but now he seemed to tower overhead, colossal, elemental and as blue an open sky.

Then everything, all at once, became an uninterrupted brightness to Baily.

Doc heard a scream off to his left, and cut in that direction. He too had been running blindly for a while and was thankful when something gave him a clue as to where he should go. He knifed through the woods as quick as he dared, and had only been running for maybe a second and a half when a great whoosh of air, and a deep rumbling boom threw him to the mud, and sent his head lolling back.

He held on, against all sense, thinking for some insane reason that he'd tripped a sort of booby-trap that Surge and his instructors had set up, in his blind haste. He knew what this was after all. He often listened in to their talks with one another. One of the DI s had knocked them all out with a Drowzee, though, and he'd been unprepared for that. He wasn't about to let himself be beaten by a bunch of leathernecks that were two stupid to even whisper. He grit his teeth and pulled himself up with handfuls of grass.

He thought, confusingly, that he was looking at the sun breaking over the hill, though he knew he couldn't have been out here that long. Then, perhaps more confusingly, he realized that he was looking at a huge column of blue that stretched up high over the trees. It wavered and swirled like fire, almost aurora-like in its appearance, but he felt no heat. He scrambled to his feet, and through the last rows of underbrush to emerge onto the scene.

He didn't think he'd ever seen anything like it.

The open glen was lit up like the harshest full noon he'd ever known, but as through perfect cloud-cover, lacking all of the characteristics of the yellow light from the sun. Instead it was like a punishing fluorescent, yet impossibly pervasive electric lamp was just overhead.

A line of utter devastation was cut from the center of the glen, to its perimeter, and at the terminus of this ray of smoldering grass, singed foliage and cracked tree limbs, was a stout man, whom Doc recognized as Baily from the wide set of his shoulders, and the shock of red hair poking from a tear in his ski-mask…and the fact that he was still wearing his fatigues, albeit with a bright red R stenciled over it with fabric paint. It was a rather poor disguise.

He wondered for a moment if he was dead, slammed as he was against the trunk of a thick poplar. A muted groan as he slumped off to the side said otherwise, though, and Doc turned his attention away, for in the center for the glen, at the lines origin, was something altogether more strange. Ash Ketchum stood there, for to Doc it was unmistakable as to who that was, even if it was lit up brighter than a Christmas tree, with those ferocious blue eyes, that he recognized from desperate seconds not too long hence.

He was more a silhouette than a person, a boy-shaped cut-out of pure white, as though what he was seeing was a page in a magazine that someone had scissored a hole in to the blank page beneath, as though reality itself were trying to peel away from this uncontainable thing.

His body was so bright that he was hard to look at directly, but those blue eyes were unmistakable coals of venting, angry azure. Their look was of an emotion both old and nameless, a fury like only nature could understand—boundless in the ways of oceans and the ominous distance of space; incomprehensible in name and true purpose. It made his blood turn cold in his veins.

The pillar of blue light, arced and raged high into the air above them, charring the canopy above into so much cinders—though Doc still felt no heat—and Doc thought for a long frozen moment that he would surely see a more direct application of this apparently destructive force he'd originally thought was simply a young trainer, but the blazing figure only stooped to collect something from the strewn bag at his feet.

And then, just as though someone had flipped a light-switch, all of that brilliant energy vanished and dissipated without a trace of it ever having been there, and left behind a mud-clotted trainer who seemed rather pathetic by comparison.

Ash felt suddenly in his place again, as he wrapped fingers around his lost belt. All six, he counted, as he looked down out of his brown eyes, to the six red and white orbs, slick with rain, but safe once more in his grasp. He shuddered with a relieved sob he didn't even know he'd been holding back. There was nothing in the whole world he'd ever let come between him and Pikachu ever again! He wouldn't let this out of sight from now on, and as soon as this stupid miserable training was over, he'd throw that stupid poke ball away, and never ever again would he put Pikachu back into one, no matter what anybody said!

He clutched it tightly to himself, and looked back up. He'd expected to see a DI where he now saw Doc, tromping towards him in the mud, coming to tell him to RTB, and get his ass ready for morning drills, or chew him out for running off without instruction. He wouldn't have really cared. He suddenly felt very tired and just hoped that whatever happened, it ended with him going back to sleep.

Doc, honestly, wasn't sure it was smart to continue his approach, or if he should just back away slowly and make a break for it, but he steeled himself. He couldn't begin to describe what he'd just seen, much less make a case for being afraid of it, beyond the fear of the unknown. By that same token, he found that he was actually pinching the back of his hand to make sure he hadn't been dreaming it all.

He tried to make sense of it. He'd suspected for a long time that there was something strange about Ash, and for a variety of reasons, some not just his own, but he'd never believed in…he felt hesitant to think of what he'd seen even as supernatural. Preternatural, is probably what Holiday would've called it. Simply out of the ordinary.

Which begged the question; Why did Team Nebula have such an interest in him that their boss would send the two of them overseas to follow them on foot, when Holiday, especially, was such an essential part of the scientific team? The obvious answer was to study him and therein was the reason Holiday was along, but what exactly had this been? What exactly were they studying? He couldn't even tell what he was looking at anymore.

Like all people faced with the desperate unknown, he fell back onto what he knew. With a sudden burst of speed, he closed the remaining distance, and caught Ash under the arm—not harshly, but with enough force to command authority—and hugged it up against his neck with a curl of his arm, revolving to take his place behind the young trainer, even as he cinched the half-nelson tight. His arm was already elevated to block the incoming flail, and lower Ash gently to the ground, where Doc would feel safer about talking this through, but Ash didn't even bother to struggle. He fell limp and sagged hard, barely able to keep his feet under him.

"I feel weird," Ash murmured. He was not even aware that he was being held in submission, apparently.

Doc was even less sure what to do, now. He could drop Ash into a heap, and pretend like he'd never been here, that much was now certain, as Ash's legs bowed outward, and Doc had to physically hold him up. He doubted that he'd be doing himself a service, even if he did. Who was going to believe that Ash had chucked the acting Senior DI into a tree from thirty feet away, even with everything else set aside? Baily was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, not to mention meaner and nastier than Ash had ever thought about being. Where would they find any evidence, even if they tried? Here he was practically a limp noodle, in Doc's arms.

_Then why don't you let go of him?,_ he asked himself. He started to do just that, but then tension in his gut stopped him cold. Even as helpless as he seemed, he couldn't bring himself to give up his advantage on the young trainer. He was afraid to. That was something wholly new, in and of itself, no matter how justified it was by what he'd seen. Just the thought of it made him angry.

"What the hell are you?!" he complained loudly, giving Ash a shake.

The boy made a jarred sound, as his head lolled about. "You never seen a real trainer before?" he asked deliriously, just the same way he had weeks ago.

Okay, well, at least he seemed like he knew who he was talking to. Still, even the sly deflection increased his ire. He gave the boy another shake, forgetting that he'd meant to entreat here. "How…why…what did you do, Ash?!" he roared, finally finding the question he wanted to ask the most. "What the hell was that?!"

Ash seemed to realize the destruction before him, in a way not so different than how Doc had, albeit more groggily. That was when the tension started. He looked at Baily, and then he looked at his hands. All the lights and 'fire' were gone now, but the evidence smoldered on, still there to see. Doc wondered just how much he knew, as he seemed to lapse from delirium into comprehension. "I came out here, and…" Ash's voice seemed to tremble, as he thought back on it. "...and, I remember reaching for that bag, then he_ hit_ me," the trainer stated, as if a bit shocked.

"...and then…everything went white," Ash said finally, as though that ending to the story didn't quite make sense.

Doc tried to look surprised, if only for the benefit of his own personal backstory with Ash. Holiday's voice rang in his head, when the thought about the time he'd asked about why Ash had conveniently forgotten all about them, following their run-in in Viridian.

"Psychic Delta-waves in focused projections," the research admin had said, like it was no big deal, and that he should understand perfectly what that meant. "When they collide with the weaker Aureole that surrounds living things, cause localized lapses in perception and memory."

"Okay, all I got out of that was psychic laser-beams, and something about being surrounded by nipples."

"Aureole, not Areola. That would be pretty awesome, though."

"Can you just make it a little easier to understand?"

Holiday had let out a huff, as he always did, but surprisingly, he'd not become dismissive. "Its complex," he'd warned, "but basically, you understand that psychic attacks affect the brain, right?"

"Yeah, right."

"Well, they do that, by rendering an effect on the non-observable field of ambient psycho—"

"The nipple-field thing, got it."

"Or, in lay-terms, Aura. Hence, Aureole, and the study there-of, Aureology," Holiday had continued with derision.

"The stuff that Lucario use?"

"Yes, and not just Lucario, but that's a whole other diatribe for another time—stick with me, here," he had offered hurriedly. "This interaction between the projected energy of a psychic attack and an Aureole can affect various things. When this happens in a Pokémon battle, normally, there is a resultant effect on the Pokémon's physiology. The psychic attack thus renders itself in a non-physical way, using the targeted Aura-field to resolve the move, by way of interference, rather than with actual contact. We define this attack using special parameters. Ergo, you have the term "Special Attack."

"So, a Psychic attack is like static on a TV?"

"If static on a TV could crack your ribs, and make you forget your first name," Holiday had explained, evidently quite pleased that Doc had made the logical inference, without having to rope-a-dope around. "The interference is very harmful, since Aura regulates most of the homeostatic processes of the body."

Holiday had paused there, as if waiting for the obligatory "Homo" malapropism to come along, as a matching pair to the earlier nipple crack, but Doc shrugged. "I know what that means. Heart-beat, body-regulation and stuff, right?"

Holiday had rolled his eyes. "Right," he'd began slowly, having lost his train of thought, after devoting it all to scathing retort, now rendered useless, Doc guessed. "Well, the same process occurs in Human aureole as in a Pokémon's, for the most part. There is a spike of interference that can have measurable and profound effect, yet because the Human Aureole is fundamentally different than that of a Pokémon, there is a difference in the resultant physiological damage."

"So Psychic attacks affect humans differently?"

"That's what I just said."

Doc had made a face, but let him go on.

"They more often cause a sort of disorientation, and associative memory loss, centered on the attack itself. The aureological interference disrupts the way the brain records memories in the short-term, similar to the way electromagnetic interference corrupts data recorded on magnetic tape."

"Magnetic tape? Like a VHS?"

"Yeah. Like a VHS."

"Those are so old. What a crap analogy."

"I think you're missing the point," Holiday had huffed, finally beginning to lose his patience. "Though the severity and span of the memory-loss is associated most closely with the intensity and frequency of the applied delta-waves, because the brain works in an associative way, i.e.; we remember things based on similarity and experience, a person with particularly strong cognitive faculties will eventually make sense of his lost block of time."

"I don't think we have to worry about that, bro."

"Me neither. You still haven't remembered that time you caught me rawdoggin' your little sister."

"I don't even have a sister."

"Or is it just that I'm so good at this shit, that you don't remember having a sister, who I may or may not have fucked?"

"I don't have a sister," Doc had reiterated, with annoyance.

"Well, if you did, she'd be a total slut," Holiday had said, dismissively. "Anyways, the point is, the Kid's memories are still there, they're just too messed up for the brain to translate into anything that makes sense, so all the kid remembers is just a blip, a tiny little white-spot, where everything that happened before the he came to Viridian connects to everything after he came to from the attack. Kinda like the sensation you get when you first wake up from a dream: You know you were asleep for a long time, but feels like it's only been a few seconds since you closed your eyes and you can't remember any of what you dreamed about, even though you just got done having it?"

"So dreams are really small psychic attacks that happen when you go to sleep."

"Yeah w—" Holiday had paused, stricken, and then fixed a glare on Doc, knowing the admin was only doing this to irritate him. "No, shut up." He stopped then, to clear his throat. "What I'm trying to say, is that we have to be careful. Like I said, Human memory is associative, so even though he's dumber than a box of hammers, we need to avoid doing anything that might remind him of bumping into us in Viridian. We already got lucky once," he'd finished thought-provokingly, calling to mind their run-in with Ash at mount Moon.

If there was one thing he didn't want Ash to remember, it was that they were criminals. He was already in hot enough water as it was, with Surge and his jarheads.

Similar, and even more frightening than that, though, was that he didn't know exactly what Ash would do if he remembered the full story of what had just taken place. Would it cause some sort of freakish relapse, where in Ash would go "super-nova" yet again? He was sure he didn't want to do anything that might bring that about that, if Baily, still mostly silent and motionless was any indication.

He tried to think like Holiday would have, not because Holiday was the most outright intelligent person he knew, but because Holiday was the most cunning person he knew. Holiday would've played this to his advantage and no amount of shit, no matter how bizarre, would've put him off of it. Doc had serious problems besides this, and like Holiday, it would have been better to find an opening to take advantage of, than to run from the risk.

Ash, as it turned out, gave him just the out he needed. "Somebody must've turned loose a fire-Pokémon," the young trainer burbled. "Team Rocket must not've gotten them all."

Doc nearly dropped Ash to the floor, when the sheer brilliance of it all, popped into his head. He scrambled over to make Ash's assumption come true. He clawed around in the pile until he came up with his own belt, and removed Arcanine's ball from it. Carefully wiping it free of dirt, he tucked it under the hem of his a-shirt, with a satisfied smile. "That was me." he commented towards Ash, who just said there in a heap, head spinning. "I totally saved all your Pokémon for you."

Ash's eyes dilated, widened, and then became placid again, as he tilted his head back. Impressionably, he gasped. "Thanks."

Doc made a conceding gesture. "Unfortunately, that'll probably get me into a heap of trouble, seein' as how we're not supposed to have any poke balls off their clips after lights-out, and I'm on such thin ice as it is."

He pretended to pout. "They'll probably have to kick me out of the training camp, before the LT even gets back from his conference."

It all seemed poised to come to pass, as two instructors came into the glen, then, as if in the midst of their own search for the mysterious blue light. They found him standing there, the sole possessor of an unholstered pokeball, along with two other downed figures, rendered varying degrees of senseless, with half or more of the clearings wet foliage smoldering in the dark.

What other conclusion could the possibly draw, than to believe he'd been the one to attack them both? Even if they didn't assume that, it was what he'd tell them. As they swarmed in to police him, he chuckled aside toward Ash. "Looks like you win this little competition, but just remember—you owe me one, now."

As Doc allowed himself to be led roughly back to base, he could hardly suppress a Holiday-esque sneer. He doubted the Research Admin could've done better himself.

* * *

**A/N:** And there you have it. Enjoy! Should be able to bang out at least one more before the holidays, but we'll see. Thanks for reading, guys!


	19. Chapter XIX

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokémon.

**Chapter Summary: **Between Silver and J, who really got the last blow in? As Silver reels from Chikorita's death, where does K find himself? It may be easy to guess who's leading the Guardians, but from whom did THAT person learn his talents with Aura?

**A/N: **I had a BLAST writing this chapter. It comes with a…

**[Gratuitous Violence & Darkness Warning!]**

…This chapter is considerably more intense pound for pound than any I've tried before it. I won't say too much else about it before hand, but just so long as everyone is prepared for it.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XIX**

"Suffer to Live"

Silver had never known a more complete misery than the one he felt now.

He'd thought for sure that he'd never wake up, that death had almost certainly cocooned him tightly, yet he'd come to, arm smashed back into socket, and practically none the worse for the wear, while Salamence bled from a hundred wounds, and Chikorita laid lifeless in his arms. If he was to die of anything at all, it was to be guilt, apparently.

He gnashed his teeth. He didn't know how or why things had turned out this way, but he swore from the depth of him, that she would pay in kind for what she'd done! He'd find that bitch and her Salamence and together, he and his own dragon would exact the ferryman's price for their fallen friend!

Nobody could ever know what he was about to do. It would be a monstrous thing and reprehensible, besides, but he didn't care. Lance had forestalled him, but only a little. He'd seen where she'd gone down and he would find her. She couldn't have gotten far.

And when he found her, he would do to her as she'd done to him. He would take from her something that could never be replaced. He'd never killed a Pokémon or a person before, as far as he was aware, even though his long history with the G-men had been dicey on more than one occasion, and brushes with Team Rocket had left him pretty roughed up. All the same, he'd rip her fucking heart out and feed it to her. And that would be a kindness, compared to what his Salamence was likely to do to hers.

He was fully ready to do it, hands clenching and unclenching against the leather coat in his arms, anger and regret and sorrow threatening to boil over with every step. Fate dealt him a crueler hand still, than forcing gruesome murder upon him. It denied him his retaliatory vengeance.

The fall had left her Salamence a tangle in the dirt, broken and collapsed, bludgeoned to death. Lifelessly, its mouth twisted in a final snarl, though whether in anger or pain, Silver could only guess. Its long spine bent crookedly, and a bough of spruce was slammed through its back; sticky sap and blood intermingling. Still, his own Salamence set after it with fury, biting deeply into its neck and thrashing about, in an effort to detach its head from its body.

For a moment, he wanted to command Salamence to stop, suddenly feeling repulsed by the hideous act, but then he saw that woman—that thing!—crumpled on the ground not so far off, he couldn't say that he felt differently.

He dashed to her, and put everything he had into a vicious kick that infuriatingly succeeded only in hurting his leg, and just barely rolling her metal frame once over. She was a mess. Somewhere in the fall, she'd had a huge patch of flesh ripped from her face and neck, which would undoubtedly be hanging to dry somewhere up in the trees. A hundred other lacerations had all but shredded her overcoat and beneath it, he could see that much more of her than her arm was metal. Still, the parts that mattered, the vital organs, those seemed human enough, since he'd kicked her up out of a puddle that seemed to contain as much blood as any human being had a right to have. A branch as thick as his arm punctured her guts, stressing against the fabric of the front of her coat as she rolled onto the protruding opposite end. There was no doubt in his mind that she was dead.

All around her hung the smell of on-setting rot, and decay. It was a slightly curdled, sweet smell, cut by the sharp tang of what must've been transmission fluid.

How dare she get off so easy?! He wanted to tear that stupid fucking arm off and wake her up so he could beat her back to death with it. Instead, he did the only thing he could do, impotent with rage as he was, and clutching his deceased friend.

He kicked at her again, screaming. He kicked and he kicked, stomping at her viciously; crazed with anger, until a small voice in the back of his head, one that was not his own but belonged to someone he loved, warned him that he should stop now; that he had done enough.

And he knew that was true. He knew that if he didn't stop now, that he would never stop, and that his sadness and anger would crush him down into something frightful, if it hadn't already. He sank to his knees, still clutching the bundle in his arms, huffing for air, and trying to ignore the pain in his bruised, and now possibly fractured shins.

When he looked up again, he felt his anger rise impossibly high at the sight of her, even staring dead-eyed into the sky. He didn't kick her corpse again, but that didn't stop him spitting in her face. It splatted into her unmoving eye, and dribbled down her cheek, like a sticky, morbid tear.

"_Damn_ you," he cursed, through his raw throat.

He turned to find Salamence behind him, mouth full of blood and viscera, and something wet and nearly unidentifiable at his feet, dropped there for his approval. He didn't really have to guess what it was, but if he'd had to, the blue crest-fins would have given it away, though. Most of a Salamence head, its flesh ragged and distorted. The sight made his stomach turn over, to be honest, but what could he say? What, honestly, could he rebuke Salamence for, which he would not have done himself?

Salamence looked at him, searching for some indication that he'd pleased his trainer, and So Silver clutched his jacket in one arm, and collared the dragon tightly pulling its huge head against him in a hug. "Good job," he murmured. He knew it was sick and demented how much he actually meant it, but he didn't care. The dragon nuzzled him with appreciation.

He knew they ought to leave now. Later, he would tell Lance about this place, but not right now, hot with anger as he was. Truthfully, he just wanted to go home. He needed rest, and Salamence still needed care that he alone could not provide. Some of his poke balls had been broken in the fall, and he would probably need the Professor's help to reclaim them from the storage system. As for Chikorita…

Well, he would have to figure that out.

* * *

He hit the ground hard. He'd overshot it.

Teleportation was a tricky thing to get right, even at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. He'd meant to come out in the underground chambers within the inner bastion of Cameran Palace, where the Guardians made their home and barracks on the Kanto mainland.

Instead, the hard, sharp crush of glass and the clatter of silver and broken wood beneath his cloak told him he'd suddenly appeared in the grand dining hall, and smashed cleanly through a table he hadn't expected to be there, given the circumstances.

He wished he could get up, to apologize to the Queen and excuse himself, but he'd barely withheld enough energy to crawl feebly to a resting place once he'd returned, and the nearest resting place was far, far distant now.

He didn't know how many guests were there, but he could hear gasps, and was thankful of his cloak to hide beneath. He shuddered, and tried to rise, but it was no use. There was nothing left.

The exchange had taken everything he'd had and more. He had no strength remaining, even to roll off the sharp spike of a dining knife that was threatening to puncture his midsection.

Queen Ilene had seen much and more of the Guardians even since their contemporary reformation, four years ago, but hers was a dynastic line that stretched back into the true history of the order, which made even the host of Guardians assembled now, strong though they were, a pale thing by comparison.

The sudden appearance of the leader of the Guardians during a diplomatic banquet was surprising and a bit distressing, given the nature of it, but she was not stunned by it and she set to managing it with grace and civility. "Esteemed Guests!" she said loudly, nearly at the cusp of a shout to be heard over gasps. "I'm afraid I must conclude our festivities at present. An urgent matter has arisen. Please allow the royal guard to escort you to the guest facilities."

She made the appropriate signals and her delegates and diplomats nodded their assent, not without some concern, but willing to comply. Her ceremonial guard, swept from the hall, leaving her alone with the robed figure. She stood, and sat Mime Jr. down where she'd resided at the seat of honor, giving the baby Pokémon's little cheek a pinch and a conciliatory smile. With that done, she lifted the hem of her skirt, and stepped quickly from the dais. Without concern for constricting attire, she slid to her knees before the downed Guardian and with much unladylike effort, heaved and rolled him from the heap of the collapsed table, until he lay upon his back. She could've called for help, but she could manage that much on her own, at least

She swept his hood aside, to see whose face lie beneath it. He looked back at her, purple eyes alert, though weary, and she felt great relief. She smiled.

"Sweet Knight," she addressed him softly. She'd called him that, ever since she'd invited him into the Palace, for though his large, nearly alien appearance frightened many, he was the possessor of a more gentle heart than some might ever know.

"Milady," the Guardian murmured back to her, his perception foggy with weariness. "Forgive me. I am exhausted. I could make it no further."

"Let us get you to rest, then." She called for her escort, then, because she simply could not lift him on her own. At over six feet and closing in on three hundred pounds, he was nearly twice the knight as any she possessed. A pair of chapeau'd guardsmen came in the door, presently thereafter.

She frowned when she saw that the Guardian desperately pawing for his hood, to put it back up. Though it saddened her, she helped him. Beckoning for Mime Jr., she followed the two guardsmen down into the lower keep, to the Guardian Barracks. With Riley away on his duties, the bastion was empty. She ordered the Guardian laid upon a cot, and then dismissed her men once more.

She was a queen, and used to others seeing to her comforts. Some, therefore, might've seen it as strange that she set about seeing to the Guardian, but what more could a Queen be called, than a caretaker to her people? Maybe not in so mundane a way, though the idea of a monarch was somewhat eccentric of an ideal in this day and age, yet still, even if it was as a product of bygone legacy, and a vestigial, quasi-political figurehead, she took that role seriously, to a man. A queen should be foremost compassionate with her people and second, stern and unyielding in their defense.

This was how her mother had seen it, and how her mother before her had seen it, and how she saw it as well. Much had changed throughout the near-century of collective rule the three people in question had known, but she could not see that the tenants of her rule should be so much different from theirs.

When she had discovered that Red had reformed the Guardians in Kanto, he'd sworn no oath of fealty to her. The Guardians served higher ideals than those of man, or their petty lords, after all. Yet, following Red's death, when his protégé had led their small sect here, she'd still given them bread and board, and in that, regardless of whether they recognized her as their ruler, they were still amongst her people. She felt responsible for them, in the way of mother and children.

She layered him in blankets, and filled a basin with cool water from the servant kitchen, before returning to once more withdraw his hood, and dab his face with a soaked cloth. When she felt as though her task was done, and his tired gasping turned to the soft murmurs of sleep, she did not withdraw coolly, though she might've. Her compassion was born of duty, yes, but it was not wholly that.

She drew up a chair, and though it was somewhat firmer than those she was used to, she folded her bustle double, and sat comfortably, watching him sleep. Her worries were soothed, for the time being, but they would not truly relent until she had a chance to talk to him. She knew that the Guardian agenda was not boding well, at the moment, and news had reached north of suspicious explosions and conspiracy in Kanto proper.

"Oh, Mewtwo," she sighed darkly at the recumbent guardian, though she knew he wouldn't answer her. "What is happening to this world?"

While she waited, her Sweet Knight dreamed of his master.

Red had come to him, a boy of fifteen. The young ex-champion found him, seemingly without trouble in the City of Castelia, though he'd been keeping an almost impossibly low profile. Further, he'd found him, and made it quite blunt and clear what he wanted, without bothering to give formalities.

"I'm the strongest trainer in the world," he'd said, plain as if he'd simply been telling his given name. "And I want to partner with the strongest Pokémon in the world. Nothing else will do."

The boldness, first, had smacked of ego, and he'd recoiled from Red. Shortly, though, the boy had proved it to him. He was a psychic, after all, and so the human brain was an open book, ready to be read. The tome Red presented him was layered and complex, full of creative ideas and complex notions that made Mewtwo's head spin and for the first time, lapsed outside his comprehension. His skill as a battler, if anything, had proven even more overwhelming.

Red had made no move to capture, or even to dominate him with personality, though. A partner was what he'd sought in Mewtwo, and that was what Mewtwo had become, to the best of his abilities, at least. Science had designed and bred him at a microcosmic level to be the ultimate Pokémon, and at times, he'd believed, a supreme being in general. Red had stood as proof in his eyes that nature often laughed in the face of man's feeble attempts to emulate it. Red was probably not perfect, but he had come much closer to the mark than Mewtwo, that was for certain.

It had come as a relief, honestly, for once in his life to actually have someone worth listening to, worth following; to finally have someone to turn to who knew better than he did, as opposed to standing alone. Still, Red had never once presumed to own him, and had only ever referred to Mewtwo as his partner. In spite of that, Mewtwo had gradually come to realize that "partners" were people you might one day hope to stand beside as equals. That meant, to him at least, Red would always be his master.

He'd not realized just how true that was, until a year later, when Red had put before him the idea of using Aura. Not _for_ him, as a Pokémon, but _with_ him, as a teaching aide, until he could do it himself, like the Guardians in ancient times. It was the only time he'd ever doubted Red, and the last. He'd never believed that there was any way a human could possibly use Aura. At that time, like most, he had never heard stories of the Guardians, and certainly would have believed them to be just that, if he had.

Red, however, was soon crushing through every expectation and every boundary, just as he had as a trainer. If Mewtwo showed him how to lift things into the air with his Aura, soon he would be uprooting trees, and floating himself off the ground. If Mewtwo showed him how to form it into physical shapes, like Aura Balls, and shields, Red would soon be putting it to use in ways that were more creative than anything he could've come up with. He'd never purposely made Mewtwo feel inadequate, but there had been no time at all before Red had been coming to him less and less for advice and more and more to show Mewtwo something new he'd learned on his own.

And that's how things had gone for years. Sometimes they would stay in one place for months, and other times, they would ramble for months at a time. He'd always gotten the impression that Red was looking for something, but he'd never known just what.

Until that day had come, not so long ago. The day in which he'd tried and failed to do what Mewtwo had just accomplished. Though Red had lingered for a time, that day had ultimately proven the end of him. He'd asked his master to know just why, but Red had never truly said one way or another. Maybe he'd just been embarrassed by that, his first and only failure, but he'd always somehow doubted that.

In his dream, they sat with one another as they often had, while on the road. Sometimes, they had sat with others, the few whom Red had chosen to teach his learned gift—the few capable of learning—but most often, it was them alone, as Guardians traveled more freely in those days, and had no true home.

It was just like one of the many days they'd shared together, but he knew he was dreaming. Even in his dream, he still felt tired. He practically lay against a tree, as Red sat across from him at the campfire, stirring something or other in a kettle. Still, the urge rose in him to ask, just as he'd wished and just as he'd known he would have, had he been blessed with more time.

"Why?" he asked, feebly.

Red's voice sounded so far away, even though he was right there at the fire, not but a stones-throw distant. Seemingly across miles, it reached his ears as a nearly-silent whisper.

"We're closer than ever now, and this is what you ask me?" The Red across the fire said with a somewhat bemused frown.

Mewtwo felt himself frown in kind. "Closer than ever?"

"You're almost dead." Red explained, barely audible over the soft crackle of fire. "_Almost dead_, and _dead_ are close enough."

Mewtwo didn't know about that. He tried not to invest himself too much into that idea. This was just a dream, and nothing more.

"I'm going to die, then?"

"Yes," Red told him, still seeming so, so quiet. "But not now, and not because of this."

Mewtwo felt foolish. "We all have to die, of course."

"Some more than others." Red whispered.

"Won't you tell me why, then? Just for my peace of mind," he begged.

Red looked down at the fire for a long while, and then back up again. It seemed like if the wind blew through the grass, Red would be downed out against the noise.

"What good is a thing, if all you can do with it, is lose it, Mewtwo?"

He didn't know. He shook his head.

"Did I ever tell you about Blue?"

Red had, once or twice. He nodded.

"A long time ago, he asked me whether not I knew what it was like to have one of my Pokémon die," Red said, if possible, more softly. "I didn't, and I told him so, and he left it at that. I didn't really understand what had brought on the question, until I had some time to think about it, later on. At the time that he asked me, I remember that he no longer had his Raticate, which he'd used against me in previous battles. I assumed he'd just traded it away, since that was pretty common for us, at the time.

"It wasn't until sometime later, that I found out from his sister that his Raticate had been wounded aboard the S.S. Anne, during a battle with me and because of the crowding and confusion on the luxury liner, he was unable to make it to a Pokémon Center in time and his Raticate passed away.

"I should've realized in Lavender Town to begin with that Blue was there to lay his deceased friend to rest, in the Pokémon Tower. Instead I was just crass, and tried to provoke him into another battle. Despite that, Blue never outwardly told me that I was responsible for the death of his Pokémon. He hid his grief and instead channeled that energy into the motivation he needed to continue his quest to become Indigo League Champion.

"When the time came where the two of us faced off against one another in the regional tournament finals, he used a technicality in the rule-book to disqualify four of my Pokémon. It was a cheap trick, but I guess I can't really blame him for it, given what I know now. He wasn't able to defeat me, but he did manage to force me to a draw.

"At first, I tried to push for a sudden-death tie-breaker, but Mr. Goodshow decided that we should both be eligible for an Elite Challenge. Blue did everything he could to make sure he won the first take, and just as everyone suspected he would, he defeated all four Elites, and the residing Champion."

"Unfortunately, when it was my turn to take the challenge, I did the same. He defended his title and I crushed him. He still holds the record for shortest title retention. Two days. He was champion for two days, and I snatched it out of his hands.

"I think part of him must've known he'd never get it back from me, because he never tried to regain contention after that. I didn't hear from him ever again. For a while I had assumed that he'd just gone to a different region to compete, but then his family started reaching out to me, trying to get in contact with him. He'd left home and he hadn't spoken to anyone. I thought then, that maybe he was just being a sore loser, but it kept up.

"Knowing that and knowing how much it must've meant to him, even if at the time I had no clue as to why or the real motivations behind it, I was starting to realize just how little the title was actually starting to mean, to me. It was fun, being a part of that elite class of trainers, at least at first. Maybe it was just that I eventually came to realize that I'd been elevated to that height by climbing over the broken dreams of others; that I had essentially gained all I had, through destroying my best friend's life.

"I had to wonder, if there was someone like that in the history of all the other champions. Someone they'd trampled over, without caring at all. Like me, did they even know they had done it? I couldn't shake it off, no matter how hard I tried, so eventually, I just quit. I couldn't stand to be there, anymore."

"Were you looking for Blue the whole time I knew you?"

Red shrugged. "Not forthright, perhaps, but I was keeping an eye out for him. For some sign, at least. When I'd first started following you, and I'd heard of your exploits on New Island, I thought at first that you were him; calling yourself the _World's Strongest Pokémon Trainer _and all. I had hoped you might be Blue, trying to goad me."

Mewtwo felt a twitch in his chest come on unbidden. "I left that life behind. I was young and foolish."

Red scoffed. "So was I. We met up not too long after that, so I don't have to tell you that I never found him."

Mewtwo was silent, for a time. A compulsion within him made him want to apologize, though truthfully he'd done no wrong.

"Because I never found him, when we found out about Aura, when I discovered that I could use it, and after I had learned what the Guardians in ancient Kanto were capable of, I knew that there was only one thing left that I could do that could possibly make amends."

Mewtwo knew the rest without it being said. Red had gone to the Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town, and it had meant his doom. Together they had learned much of Aura and its uses, but the prodigy simply had not been up to the steep task at hand. In truth, no Guardian had ever seized mastery over life and death, though they had long professed that was within the realm of possibility. That meant no Guardian, including Red. The attempt to return the poor Raticate to life had not succeeded and the required expenditure had left Red a mess. Like his Aura itself had burned him out from the inside and left him hollow, Red had lingered on for only just a few more days, comatose and withered, before slipping away.

"You have made strides since I left you, to have done what I couldn't."

"Red, I—"

"There is no need to apologize to me. Being a great aura-guardian was never my dream in life. How did you do it?"

Mewtwo sat in silence for a while. "I'm not sure. My heart told me I would be needed there. I had already sent Riley, but for some reason the urge remained. I simply followed it. I didn't know what I would find. There was a Chikorita, and her trainer."

"Was it the Pokémon, or the human?"

"The man. Together Chikorita and I were able to revive him."

Red's eyes seemed to light with interest, at that. "Together? That's excellent! I see you made it out okay. So that must be the way, then! Did the Chikorita, also…?"

Mewtwo sighed, and shook his head, forlorn. He'd done the task as Chikorita had desired, and just as Red before her, the act had left Chikorita empty and lifeless inside. He wasn't sure she'd even lived long enough to see it come to fruition, and that did weigh heavily on his spirit. After that, he'd decalcified Salamence and left before the trainer could come to. He'd had not the strength of body or heart left to explain. Better that that man draw his own conclusions, most likely.

Red likewise lost his good humor. "How unfortunate."

The silence lingered on, and the wind blew through the campsite, carrying only the sound of crackling wood and the smells of cooking stew.

Red perked, seeming to remember. "Ah! You asked me so many questions, it's almost time to go, and I still haven't told you the important thing I came to say."

Red stood from the fire, and ladled out a bowl of stew, before crossing the campsite to his partner. He offered it with a smile. When he spoke, he sounded somehow farther away than ever. "You're going to be down for the count, for a while. The guardians will need someone to help direct them. Your protégé isn't too bad, but he's got a lot to learn, yet."

Mewtwo did not reach for the bowl. He felt very frustrated suddenly, and his urge was to slap it away in anger. Respect stayed his hand, but still he narrowed his eyes. "Who? Everyone has denied us."

Red's smiled widened. "Second chances come along, every so often. Something tells me, that if Riley crosses paths with her again, she'll come around."

Mewtwo didn't suppose he had to say who she was. It was rather obvious. He looked back toward Red, after a moment of contemplation. "You asked me before about what good a thing was, if all you could do with it, was lose it. Was it some kind of riddle?"

"In a way, I suppose," Red answered. He looked sad.

"I don't understand. Did you mean the championship? Or Blue's dream?"

Red looked back at him, meeting purple eyes with bright, iridescent blue. Those were not the eyes Red had been born with, but he'd come to possess them, in a way that seemed somehow more natural. When he spoke, he sounded close by for the first time, as though the strength of his statement lent it volume. "I meant _life_."

The statement took him by surprise, for suddenly the Red before him was the gaunt and desiccated Red whom he'd sat with for those many long hours, staring blankly outward with sad, regretful eyes that looked well past him, into infinity. When he flinched away and blinked, Red stood once more, a strong young man who was smiling sadly.

"If you find an answer to it, won't you tell me?" the boy implored. "I have to go now, but I'm sure we'll see each other again."

Mewtwo's voice had caught in his throat, but he had one more question burning in him, as Red stood to leave.

"Did you ever find Blue? Was he there, on the other side?" Mewtwo begged, trying to rise, trying to follow.

Red stopped walking away, but he did not turn, only coyly reposted the query. "The other side?"

Mewtwo grit his teeth, trying to rise, but finding it fruitless. "In death, I mean," he explained in a cold whimper.

Red only sighed and shook his head. "Mewtwo, I'm sorry, but…you know this is just a dream."

Mewtwo awoke to Ilene, gently pressing a spoon to his lips. He wanted to push it away, to scream in frustration and sorrow and to beg her give him privacy, but he had not the strength to do any of those things. Fever wracked him and he trembled, even motionless in rest.

"You must eat, Sweet Knight." Ilene implored, urging him to part his lips.

He allowed her to feed him. The stew was hearty and thick, but it only soured his stomach. He hurt everywhere, and he could only barely find the strength to speak. "Riley," he muttered, grasping for her wrist.

Logic told him that it was not truly that he'd communed with Red, but honestly, he _wanted_ to believe that, weak and weary as he was. Red was the only person he'd felt confident relying upon, and he was just so desperate to have that back. "Please, s-send for Riley," he managed. "Tell him to… ask her again. He'll…" He paused to heave a breath. "He'll know what you mean."

At the moment, it was all the Guardians had to go upon. He didn't allow empty sleep to claim him again until Ilene promised that she would fulfill his request.

* * *

K's misfortune seemed to have no limitations.

They'd landed and held at Rendezvous Point B for sixteen hours and still, there was no sign of her. Every second that ticked away was liberation and damnation. He'd virtually barricaded himself in her quarters. Not because he believed he was the rightful acting captain of the ship, because he certainly had no desire to be any such thing, whatever her disappearance might've meant.

No, it was more because every leer and every sour look that he'd suffered over the past months had somehow turned more sinister and more hateful during the past half-day. J had made it clear to them, that she could and would kill anyone who tried to "work their way up the corporate ladder", so to speak, by eliminating her chosen lieutenant, but the brutal and honest truth of it was that J wasn't here, and the memories of Mercenaries were short indeed.

There'd already been something of a scuffle between the chief boatswain's mate and the tactical warfare officer for control of the ship, which everyone believed had resulted in a stabbing fatality down on the orlop deck. There was a body, but thus far, nobody had stepped forward to point finger, and were instead, waiting to see which faction would overpower the other, and join in once all was decided, in true mercenary fashion. Not that it mattered, since he knew quite well who'd stabbed the boatswain's mate. On paper, he had the technical authority to send the TWO to the brig even just on that suspicion alone.

But his authority was a principle and the warfare officer now had almost total de facto control of the bridge deck and all the men stationed there, and that was a lot stronger than a principle nobody even believed in anyways. No men aboard would back his authority, probably even if he'd actually wanted it.

So now, it was all just a count-down to the moment where either J showed up in grand fashion like the swashbuckling pirates of yore, and wrested back control of her ship, with a few exemplary murders of her own, before resuming her day-in-day-out process of making his life miserable, or else the moment the mutinous crew would unite under a single banner, and come crashing through the locked hatch of J's stateroom, and keelhaul him.

He didn't find either possibility very humorous, in spite of their flavorful connotations, nor did he find either particularly preferable. All that had him choosing the first one, at this point, was his basic sense of self-preservation. Better to die tomorrow, than to die today, after all.

He busied himself and his fretting nerves by rummaging about. He had every confidence that J would rip all his fingers off and cram them up his ass one by one, if she found him rooting around through her belongings, but that hardly mattered at this point. He hoped he would find something to defend himself with, but as he looked at the room around him, he doubted it. J didn't seem to have many belongings.

J's stateroom did not look lived-in, in the way of a personal bunk. She was not messy, and he supposed that came from the very structured nature she surely needed as the commander of such a vessel, but neither did the place seem structured in the way of an orderly, button-down commander. It just seemed empty. She had a bed that looked like it had never been slept in and an office hutch, free of expected paper documents and table organizers. A laptop sat in standby mode at an angle on the table, but it was locked down to the surface and biometrically protected, aside from being simply no real use to him. There was a standard six-cell Pokémon transference device plugged into it, but since it too relied on J's biometrics to operate, it was likewise useless. All the drawers he tried were either locked or empty, and nowhere he looked in the bare room did he find keys.

He did not find any of the things he expected, which confused him. J was a black-market baroness; a hunter and purveyor of pricelessly rare Pokémon and mercenary for hire, right? Shouldn't she have been basking in all her wealth and opulence, which assuredly came with that? Yet, in desperate lack of such, there were no rich materials, nor antiquated furnishing to be found. No heaping piles of gem-stones and golden jewelry, no stacks of small-denomination bills, nothing. In fact, he did not find a single item in the room that J could've possibly derived any enjoyment from, in and of itself, beyond practical use.

Nor did he find his Pokémon, which he supposed was what he'd most been hoping for. That, most distressingly, meant that wherever J was, so were his beloved Pokémon. As his brain wheeled in horror at that, he tried to remind himself that he still needed to find some way to protect himself.

He wasn't sure he knew exactly what made a gun-locker different from a normal locker, but he didn't suppose the one here was of the former variety. A gun would've served his needs well enough as anything else, he supposed, but why would J have needed one? He opened it anyways. As he'd expected, there was no gun, which was well enough, he guessed, since it wasn't like he'd have known how to use one, anyways. In truth, there was barely anything else of real significance inside—just a pair of boots, a spare greatcoat, and a vest of ablative body-armor not unlike his own, a few pairs of slacks, and a set of operator gloves. Something else though, propped in the corner caught his eye. Bulbous and metallic, he withdrew it, wondering for a moment if he could wield it like a club.

It was prosthesis, he realized with fright, when the limp-wristed grasper lulled towards him, palm open, and set off a knee-jerk reaction to spring away, that J had instilled in him. The metal arm hit the floor with a clatter, and several feet away, so did he, as he flung it away, and stumbled backward harshly on his bottom.

Slowly, he moved back to it, and picked it back up. His fear gone, he gave it a few testing swings. It was heavy. Really heavy. He couldn't have imagined lugging something like this around all day. The armor was bad enough. It might suffice. He doubted it would get very far in a head on fight, but it might just get him off the ship.

He went to the hatch, and placed his hand upon the seal, before his sense got the better of him.

Who was he kidding? As soon as he stepped out of here, he would be lucky if they didn't shoot him on the spot. He'd already heard them tearing his room apart to find him an hour ago. What did he expect, for them and all their Pokémon to line up and let him bonk them on their heads as he ran down the passageway?

No, he decided, it was pointless to go out there half-cocked. It was pointless to go out there at all from the way he saw it. He threw the prosthesis onto the bed and made to slump back down into the chair at the desk he'd been seated at before, but a piece of the prosthesis broke off from the forearm segment, and clattered against the bulkhead. He cringed at the sound.

At first he thought it might've been some crucial component of the arm itself, but when he picked it up to inspect it more closely, it proved to be an independent device—a remote of some kind, from the looks of it. He frowned, and looked back at the prosthesis. He realized that it was but one of many such small gadgets sank flush into the surface of the metallic limb.

"This is stupid," he said aloud, looking again at the remote. Did J use this _super-secret utility-remote_ to watch some TV built into the bulkhead? He pulled a face and clicked one of the unlabeled buttons, as though turning on such a thing for his own amusement. It was hard to imagine J watching soap-operas, even in secret.

He supposed he really shouldn't have been surprised when something happened. It wasn't a TV, though, which spared him what little scraps of sanity he had left, so far as J was concerned. What he'd thought to be a hairline seam in the bulkhead, perhaps where two plates of steel were welded together on the opposite side, let out a hiss of visible pressure, then parted slowly, until it had created a gap some three feet wide, running the full height of the wall. On the other side of the gap, which K could see went cleanly through the inner and outer bulkheads and the pressure hull itself, was the open air, and freedom.

He thought about kissing the prosthesis in a moment of absolute joy, but instead, he did the more intelligent thing. He clicked the remote back into its slot, checked the prosthesis over his shoulder and went bolting through the opening. He would've thrown it down, but he decided he still might have need of it. More gadgets meant more possibilities, and he certainly hadn't dismissed the fact that he could still use it to bludgeon anyone who got in his way.

He slid down the rounded outer airframe of the ship, and though it was a stark drop at the end of almost fifteen feet, he didn't fret. He tumbled with the force of the fall, and came up running. He didn't slow until he hit the nearby tree line, and tucked himself under a low-lying shrub.

There was no pursuit, though he could see casual sentries from where he was. It was a good thing, since he had no Pokémon to defend himself with, and he certainly couldn't outrun any they might've set upon him in this heavy armor. He thought about taking a moment to strip it off, but he figured it would do him more good than harm were he to have an actual encounter and it wasn't as though he could outrun much with it off, either.

The thought, though, reminded him that he still did need to find his Pokémon, and in doing that, he would undoubtedly have to find J. The elation he'd felt at escaping the ship vanished, and he was left with a horrible, sinking feeling in his gut. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was find J, but he had to have those Pokémon back. They were his life! He wondered briefly if Beowulf had felt this way, before facing the dragon at Earnaness. At least Beowulf had his faithful Wiglaf! All he had was this stupid metal arm!

When they'd lost contact with J, she still had his belt tucked into her coat, so it stood to reason that it was still with her. He doubted that he'd get that lucky twice in a row. He thought for a long minute about how he would find her. He wasn't familiar with this part of rural Johto in the slightest, though the task itself seemed straight-forward enough. He had a vague idea of the direction in which they traveled, and there were only just a few miles from the border. He could probably make it back there before night fell, if he hurried!

He would just have to hope that he would find her, and that when he found her she would be…

Was he really hoping he'd find her dead?

He set off, his legs pumping and his shoulders aching under the weight of his armor. He didn't really know how he felt. J had abused him and beaten him. She'd abducted him, and lied to him, and stolen everything he owned in this world. J had made him live in cold terror for almost half a year and he could not, would not forget that.

But he was neither judge nor jury. It didn't take a trained psychologist to know that there was something messed up inside J. He wasn't about to contemplate the moral dichotomy of a cut-throat killer like her, but all the same, he didn't think it was his place to condemn anyone. He tried to think of himself as a generally good person, and he hoped it would never come to such a thing.

He knew that if he found her dead, that would all be well and good. It'd give him a monster case of the willies having to essentially loot his belt from her dead body, but he'd drum up the fortitude to do that. If he found her still living, he certainly doubted he'd have the strength and skills required to finish her off, even if she was very badly hurt. It didn't have to do so much with the fact that she seemed to be some sort killer-robot, incapable of mercy or guilt, so much as he believed he lacked the certain something required to take a life, no matter how blackened and fucked up the life in question was.

He wasn't Arceus, and he had no right to pass judgment anyone, regardless of how obviously despicable he thought they were.

He steeled himself, as he carried on, though. It didn't matter what he thought, if it came right down to it, really. If J wasn't already dead, and she did find him out here, and furthermore, if she realized just what exactly it was that he was planning, he might not have a choice. If it was his life or hers, no matter what, he had to win that fight. Moral integrity was one thing but martyrdom was quite another. If J discovered his intent to take his Pokémon back and flee, were she at all capable, she would, at the very least, hurt him bad enough to make him wish he hadn't, if she didn't outright make an attempt on his life.

He had never been so unwise as to do anything but take his blows with stoicism, before, because he'd known that he could never hope overpower her while she held all the advantages: Bionic strength, a ship-full of men at her disposal, not to mention her own insidious and mean-spirited Pokémon ready to be put to use, even as she held his hostage. If he found himself with the upper hand and she pressed him, he had to be willing to do what it took to survive.

He took several deep breaths, as he briskly jogged on, forcing the air to fill his cheeks as he blew out, in order to better mentally prepare. Sandslash and his other Pokémon were counting on him to see them out of this, and he had to do it just as much for them as he did for himself. He was the one getting pummeled day after day, but how long would it be before she turned her limitless cruelty on his Pokémon? How long would it be, before she was torturing them, to get her enjoyment, while he watched?

He would never, ever allow that to happen so long as he was still breathing. That, more than anything, solidified his resolve. If he had to, if he absolutely had to, and J left him no other choice, he would kill her. It would never sit just right with him, and he would likely bear the scar of that decision for all his days…

But in the end, it wasn't about him. He and his Pokémon had sacrificed too much, worked too hard, for far too long, to resign themselves to this hell. If he had it his way, he'd simply take back his Pokémon from J, and they would spend the rest of their natural (or in J's case, not so natural) lives as far as humanly possible from one another, neither wanting nor daring to set eyes on one another ever again. However, if J tried to force him otherwise…

Well, then she would just have to taste some of her own medicine.

It was just on the brink of nightfall that he happened upon the thicket where she'd fallen from the sky and when he did, he wished desperately that he hadn't. Just the sight alone made him feel like he would be sick, and that, coupled with the putrid smell had him doubled over at the middle, spitting out excess saliva as his body prepared to vomit and he vehemently denied it.

Her Salamence, for lack of a better way to describe it, was everywhere—ripped and shredded and scattered about like the remains of an offal-filled Christmas present. The hot, congealed stink of thickened blood and opened bowel lingered all around him. Holding his nose shut lessened the powerful stench, but the thicket still reeked like a stale wound. He didn't even want to go out into that mess, to look around, but he knew he had to.

When he found her, twisted and broken, Like Silver before him, he was sure she was dead.

Unfortunately, she was only dreaming. Dreaming of Lake Verity.

The roaring, screaming depth called out for her, and when she sank deep enough, she saw why. It was not an inky blackness that resided at the bottom of the Sinnohan shale-lake, one which would swallow her forever, but something else

Her own head rose up from the silty floor of the lake to meet her, impossibly huge, impossibly malevolent. There was no monster that resided there, no old Pokémon god, no hungry beast, save her. The huge face smiled with a mouth full of metal teeth, and then lurched out to bite her.

With a crunch, both of her legs shattered and ripped away. She screamed silently beneath the water, watching as the thing opened and closed its wicked mouth again and again, and the remnants of her limbs, sickeningly, became smaller and smaller; less and less recognizable as anything but raw meat. Whether it was chewing, or hoping to catch another protruding morsel, she was drawn downward into it, first her arm, and then in just a few short chomps it had consumed her entirely, leaving only red bubbles and unidentifiable chunks. She watched herself ooze from between those teeth, as her consciousness spiraled away to somewhere else.

Far away, a white-coated man on a submarine frowned at what he saw on his laboratory display, and entered a command for a remote reboot of all systems. Alarmingly, miserably, she was alive. Not as a woman, but as a thing; a machine, designed and built for the purpose of self-mockery.

She gasped back into consciousness with nothing but the sensation of someone trying to unbutton her greatcoat. Her first intention was to intercept the attempt and summarily end it, but her body did not respond to that intent. Not in any competent way at least. She felt like she must've moved, at least a little bit, but it was not the arm-breaking denial she'd planned on. More of a Magikarp flop, than a Machop strike.

Sight returned next, but that faculty was also failing. She could see a face before her, its eyes frozen in a look of sheer terror, and she reached up to gouge them out. The arm attached to her did not so much as budge. She made the attempt again, this time trying to bring her own arm, the one of flesh and bone to bear, but it was twisted and shattered and it was like trying to use a broken tent-pole to do the job. She might've managed to touch whoever it was, but that was about it.

Pain had become a strange thing to J. She had known pain in a way that few might ever be familiar. Once, she had thought, in those delirious half-anesthetized times on Ein's operating table—how long had she really been there? Days? Weeks? Months?—that surely she would die of it. Hoped she would, at least. Instead, the procedures had left her with a strange sort of numbness when it came to even the most extreme physical trauma. She knew she was hurt, and she knew she felt something, but like a container that had once been stressed to burst, her capacity for pain was too wide to be more than triflingly bothered. Not enough of her true body remained to receive the sensation, anyways.

She tried to speak next, hoping to level a good enough threat even as her body lay motionless and battered. All that came out was a croak of air and a gush of machine-fluid, though.

K was sure he would piss straight down his leg, as she lurched beneath him. He had just barely found the balls to look for his belt inside her coat, and he was just about certain that they'd leapt up into his chest cavity. He was afraid of J, and for good reasons, beyond the fact that she was simply disgusting to nearly all of his senses. He put his hands, sticky with her black, oily blood in front of his face and cringed before the blow he'd almost assuredly get.

She didn't strike though, and in that moment, he knew. She was powerless, and helpless, and there was nothing at all she could do to stop him.

His hands curled into fists, and his urge for reprisal grew with each passing second. Now was the time! He could have his moment of true vengeance against her, for all the punishment she'd put him through. He could make her suffer in kind, for what she'd done to him. She'd brought his whole life to a screeching halt, punished and humiliated him for her own amusement. She'd made him her plaything!

This was the moment he'd prepared himself for. This was the moment he'd swore that he'd seize if it appeared before him. This was the moment that J would discover just how much pride still burned in him, at his core. How he'd hidden and balled away his anger, until it was white hot. This was the moment, where he would pay her back a hundred-fold, for all the times he'd been savaged by her wild, sudden, and reasonless anger.

The moment passed, and left him there, though. What could he truly do to J that would matter? All he had to do was look at her to know that there was no pain he was capable of inflicting on her that wouldn't pale by comparison to what she'd already gone through, and he could only guess that her anguish stretched back far further than he would ever know, if her strange, disfigured body was any indication. She was too weak to be of any harm to him, anyways.

He ignored those eyes that promised death, and resumed his task. He worked at the broken fastenings of her greatcoat, without delay. His course was complicated by the slippery, viscous fluid she'd spread about from her injuries, but did it as quickly and competently as he was able. He had to pry loose a huge tooth from her, to get it open, but he finally managed it.

If she'd looked in poor shape with the garment on, its removal made him wonder how she was still alive. What he'd thought before was just something she'd had in some inside pocket, revealed itself as the splintery end of a thick spruce limb impaled completely through her, just above her hip. Something that was not blood and not the dark machine-fluid J had inside her, oozed malignantly from the wound, like a festering sore. He thought it might've been bile, or something, but he wouldn't have known enough about anatomy, to say one way or another, even if the sight hadn't kicked off his gag-reflex.

He turned away, rested the cleanest expanse of his forearm against his lips, and huffed through his nose to keep himself from throwing up, for a second time. He nearly lost it, but he clenched his eyes shut hard, and tried not to think about anything that resembled the inside of a garbage can, for that was truly what J looked and smelled like. Worse, he thought, it was like he was peering into the bottom of a sort of rarely-emptied communal dumpster that you might find behind a strip mall, and this one so happened to be shared by a butcher shop and a car-repair center. Stinking, spoiled rotting meat, and greasy, oily, rusted metal, tangled together.

That was it. He puked on the spot, and practically into her lap, trying to steady himself with handfuls of her jacket as his body shuddered and his stomach turned inside out. The bright orange fluid contrasted the dark, blood-soaked fabric of her pants heavily, as it streaked down into the dirt. He came back up, ruing his decision to keep the armor on, for now he felt like it was smothering him. He tried to wipe the remnants from his mouth with the same expanse of quivering forearm, but he ended up using a bit of his bloody wrist, while he was at it.

He spat at the dirt and cursed, trying to regain his lost composure, but then he heard a choking sound. A weak, rhythmic was cough coming from J. He thought it might've just been the beginnings of a wheeze, or perhaps, more fittingly, her death-rattle, but it was something else.

She didn't smile, or show any of her teeth, but she looked dead at him, and sucked her breath in and out, what little she could manage. He finally recognized it for derision, when she looked between him and her lap. She was laughing at him, even on the verge of death. Laughing at how pathetic he was.

The anger returned to him, and he felt hot tears prick at the corner of his eyes. She couldn't fight back against him. She wasn't even able to lift a finger, yet when he threw the punch, it shocked even him.

Her nose, a straight and artificially perfect recreation of the original, was simply a cosmetic thing, and not made of the same hardened metal alloy that protected her skull. It splattered down her face in red streaks as K punched it sideways against her cheek, marring her further. J only laughed at him still, as he grasped his hand, and tried to ease the sting from it.

That same idea passed through his head, that he'd never truly be able to harm her in any significant way, but his anger denied that, as her mocking gasps cut him to the core. He reached for the branch in her guts, not caring what he was putting his hands in, and grasped it tight. When he gave it a twist, she stopped laughing.

Letting out a wisp of a noise, like a groan, high in the sinuses, J's head snapped backward on her neck, as the branch revolved a bit in her stomach, her teeth tight, eyes crushed shut, neck-muscles taut.

"Why won't you die?" He asked, angrily, his wounded heart finally bubbling up from beneath the shell he'd worn for so long, now. Tears leaked from his eyes, as much for his own misery as anything. "Why won't you just die already, and let me have my life back?!"

He jerked the splintered branch again and she bucked hard, coming back to face him. Her teeth bared like a wounded beast, but her steely eyes were too unnatural to show the desire to kill that lay just beneath them, in spite of her twisted visage. She said nothing, for she couldn't, but the cold grimace remained long after he took his hand away.

It was hopeless. K knew he'd never have the guts to finish her off. In his head he supposed he'd pictured something cleaner, more final, less scarring to his psyche, when he'd decided that he'd do what he had to, to protect himself and his Pokémon. Like, perhaps she'd contest him on some mountaintop, where he'd gain the upper-hand, and shove her neatly off a cliff, to die well out of his sight, leaving him to rejoice in an untainted new hope, in suitable movie-villain fashion.

This felt like the most awful thing he'd ever done or seen, and the simple fact that he could see it and feel it, as he brought her a painful agonizing end with his own hands, made him feel like he was becoming too much like her on the inside, and that made him feel sick. He couldn't do that, no matter what. Her task of crushing and demoralizing him would be wholly complete, and it wouldn't make one lick of difference whether he was free or not.

He let his head fall.

"I've got to get the hell out of here," he implored himself, as he dug around behind her waistline for what he was looking for.

He would just take what was his, and go. He could leave her to die in her own way. As a person, that was probably what J deserved. He couldn't imagine how awful it would be to die alone, amongst the remains of your own Pokémon, broken and defeated, but in the end, so long as it didn't have to be by his hands, he could live with it. It would haunt him, no doubt, but so would a lot of other things J had done.

He felt it, and wrapped his fingers around the aluminum clasp, unhooking it from her looped holster, and jerking it free. When it broke in half, and he saw what the fall had done to it, all his hopes and dreams faltered, and felt as crushed as what he beheld. He scrambled for the other piece, but it too was in the same shape. She'd destroyed them, on impact. All six of them, he realized, as he snatched out the other half, were just empty, cracked orbs of metal and plastic, useless but for scrap-metal.

The choking, gagging sound of laughter at his expense returned, and with it, a single word. It was a short word, and close to all she could manage, he was sure, but he heard it through the rasping.

"…_Ship_," she chortled, looking at the two pieces of his belt.

K felt like he was falling into a deep black pit, spiraling down into a chasm he would never be able to climb back up, even if the drop didn't kill him outright. He shuddered, as the two useless halves of belt fell from his hands. When J had shanghaied him, she'd had his Pokémon re- registered to her PC, and they would return to the shipboard storage system in any event. If he ever wanted to see Sandslash and the others again, he realized, he'd have to go back there. Not only that, but he'd have to find some way to get J back there.

"_**My**…ship_."

* * *

Brock sat watching Max rub at his mouth. He'd bumped into his first struggle as a trainer, it seemed to the older Gym Leader, and was still looking for a way to overcome it. He'd battled for the Hive Badge twice now, without success. He was delaying his third attempt until he'd developed his skills and tactics a bit further, which Brock saw as quite wise, in so far as his experience with junior trainers went.

There was something to be said for that, after all. At his age, Ash almost certainly would've gone off half-cocked and either cooked up some scheme, or kept bashing himself against that wall until he crashed, stumbled and finally fell through it. Even through the result was the same, Brock was pretty sure he preferred Max's way. It was a lot easier on his nerves, really.

Max had asked them to sit in with him, at the Azalea gym for the day. He'd been watching the last three challenges as a spectator. He wasn't saying anything, but Brock guessed from his glower that he hadn't seen what he'd wanted to, during the course of the match. The newest competitor had won out with his fire-type starter, but Bugsy had given him a tough time of it, so much so what even Max seemed to be a little put out.

He rubbed at his lip with the fingertips of his left hand, as he counted on his right, touching thumb to forefinger. Brock didn't know what he was trying to compute, but Brock guessed it was fairly complex, since his mouth was running silently. He didn't want to interrupt, so he glanced back toward the field.

Dawn had gone down from the in order to talk to Bugsy. She was standing flat on one foot, while the toe of her other shoe worked back and forth behind her. The sound of her giggling floated up to them, and Max's silent counting became muttering for as long as it took to die away, as it threatened to interrupt his concentration.

Brock had thought it would have been Max and Bugsy who'd have hit it off, really. Two young, highly-educated boys were bound to have things to talk about. Granted, Max was a bit younger, and his knowledge was perhaps a tad more encyclopedic in nature, as opposed to the more Entomological focus that Bugsy obviously had, but still, it seemed like grounds enough for an intellectual discussion. Evidently not, though, as Dawn had quickly taken up with the young gym-leader in his place.

Maybe he was picking up on a bit of frustration there, but it was hard to tell. Max was much better at reigning himself in than Ash had ever been.

A week and a half ago they'd been making their way through Union Cave, and they'd been caught off guard by a surprisingly large and deviously well-hidden Onix. Onix were rare in Union Cave, so even Brock had not expected to see one. Such a large Pokémon was bound to seem frightful to inexperienced trainers, and though Dawn and Max had both seen some pretty immense Pokémon before, being enclosed with one in a dark and confined space was something else.

Dawn, expectedly, had screamed and tried to run but Max had caught her by the arm, to make sure they all stayed together, wisely. The last thing they'd have needed at that point was to get split up and separated underground. Brock had slid to the forefront to fend off the territorial Pokémon, feeling like he'd been in this exact situation a million times before. How often had he, along with Ash and Misty, or May and Max for that matter, been set on their heels by wild Pokémon?

Brock had chosen not to keep many of his Pokémon with him regularly, as of late, knowing that Forrest needed their help at the gym more than he did on the road, but he always kept a few more versatile options on hand. Plus, he too had once been the Pewter City gym-leader. Rock types were his specialty, and that meant he was skilled at battling both with, and _against_ them.

He'd thrown out his Sudowoodo, but it had been Max who'd leapt into the fray first, whipping past him with all the excitement of a beginner trainer going after his first Rattata or Pidgey. He'd almost leapt out to stop him, but the look on Max's face had held him back. Where Ash's would've read enthusiasm and smug self-confidence, Max's visage was only calm surety, assurance written everywhere on his features, like he'd planned for this moment, for even the most remote possibility that he'd encounter such a Pokémon here, though he'd had to have known how rare they were, just as well as Brock did.

Knowing Max, he probably _had_ planned for it. Ralts, however surprising a combatant he might've proved, didn't know many grass-type moves as a general rule of thumb, being dual-type as he was. Max though, ever the strategist, dealt with this in the same way he had before. A disk for TM86 "Grass Knot" still in his hand, Max gave the command.

Ralts began to shimmer a bright, luminous spring color and where the little Pokémon focused his energy, stringy blades of wild grass roiled up from the bare rock, as sure as anything, and clung tight to the charging Onix, stopping it in its tracks. Its forward momentum—and there was a lot of it—brought its elevated front-portion crashing into the rock floor of the cavern with as climactic of a crash as he'd ever seen. Grass Knot was more effective the heavier the opponent, and Onix was near as heavy as they came.

Brock and eventually Dawn had jumped in with her Piplup and together they'd all subdued it with coordination, though all agreed that Max had given the biggest contribution, and thus had the most right of any of them to catch it. He hadn't even seemed to lose his head over that, really. Though he had smiled, he did truly give the matter a bit of thought before agreeing to actually capture the Pokémon. Perhaps it was a big change in dynamic from the small, adorable Ralts that was his starter.

Onix hadn't been much help in his previous two tries for a badge, though. Like Ash, with his Charizard, Max was out of his element with Onix, and both trainer and Pokémon seemed to know it. Rather than a lack of respect for his trainer's talent, as Charizard had once had for Ash, Onix's disdain seemed to come from the Max, so tiny and unassuming as he was, shaming it so completely as a wild Pokémon.

Either way, the end result was the same. Max and Onix lacked confidence in each other, and a single Pokémon simply would not cut the mustard, in a three-bout match-up. All urging for Max to catch another Pokémon had been met with resistance, and Dawn's offer to let him borrow her Bunneary again had been outright refused, which had caused some friction between the two of them. As a rule, he tried not to interfere in the squabbles of his younger peers. It was best to let those sorts of things work themselves out, unless they descended into scratching and hair-pulling. He'd learned that much from Ash and Misty. He'd thought about giving Max some direction regarding his newest challenge, but the youth had proven more than once already that he had a good handle on his training.

He needed to find a way to make Onix more amiable towards him, in the foremost regard, and right now that was all that seemed to be standing in his way. Being picky and choosy over which Pokémon you wanted on your team wasn't that big of a deal.

Max, sitting beside him, was fuming for a whole other reason at present, and though he didn't show it outright for what it was, that reason was pure jealousy. It wasn't that he didn't like Bugsy, so much that it rubbed him raw that Dawn seemed to. He wasn't sure exactly that he'd have been comfortable with all that attention from Dawn, but it just got right in his hair that Bugsy was the target of so much of it. What really annoyed him, though, was that the Azalea Gym leader was so obviously enamored with Dawn, as well.

Well, maybe that wasn't what really annoyed him. What really, REALLY annoyed him, was that Bugsy was so much better at talking to her than he was. Granted, Bugsy's attempts at flirtation weren't especially poignant, but that was not for lack of trying. The fact that Dawn seemed to be eating it up by the mouthful didn't do much to soothe him, either.

"You know, I just love your name, Dawn," Max could hear Bugsy remark at a distance. He may have worn glasses, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing.

"Too bad nobody can say the same for you." Max muttered, so quietly as to be unintelligible.

"It's so pretty. Just like the sun breaking the horizon at first light," Bugsy added, in a whole-hearted attempt to be romantic.

"Dawn is actually the twilight right before sunrise, but, you know, whatever," Max mumbled.

Eventually, he shook himself away from the sights and sounds, and back to the task at hand. What he was trying to figure in his head, was the number of times he could reasonably assume that Onix would ignore him before carrying out a command, based on averages from the last two matches. Onix would need to carry most of the weight in this challenge, he knew. Ralts' typing made him easy prey, more so even than the last gym, because of the early availability of strong bug-type moves, compared to flying-type. This was a very unforgiving region for Grass-type starters, he remembered, from the considerable reading he'd done before coming here.

He finished the math up, and then looked down at his fingers. With all the moves he'd seen Bugsy's Pokémon use, and what he knew off-hand about Onix in general, he'd come to a result. Four. Onix could take four hits for every hit he gave out, so if he could just get that much cooperation, he could manage to…

He lapsed out of thought, watching Bugsy and Dawn talk to each other, though he was doing his best to mentally crop the gym-leader from the image. He wondered what it might be like if he was there, capturing the sum of Dawn's interest. He wondered what sorts of things he might say, and whether or not it would be awkward and fumbling. Bugsy was no Lord Byron, but at least he seemed to have a great reserve of things to say that were engaging.

Max never felt like he knew just what to say anymore, especially to Dawn, and when he did have a point to make, it was usually summarized best with a simple _yes_ or _no. _It wasn't really that he didn't know a whole lot, but since he'd turned nine, and the clock began to count inexorably down toward the beginning of his journey, his sister had told him many times that he sounded like a tape-recorder when he got to talking about useless trivia, and that he would do best not to inundate anyone he traveled with more than he had to, or they would start to block him out.

He was sure that May was pushing her own agenda there, having been preparing up until the point that Brock had called her, to accept Max into her own party of traveling trainers, once he got his license, whilst hoping to avoid his constant fact-spewing, but it did stand to reason. The less you said, the more exception people took to the things you did say, and the more they listened. Less really was more, in that respect. As nice as Ash and Brock had been to him throughout their travels in Hoenn, looking back on it, he could tell that there had been times he'd have done better to just keep quiet. It was kind of embarrassing to think about, actually.

The only trouble with that was, he wasn't sure, now, when it was time to speak up. He didn't want to let it rip, only to find out later that he'd made himself look like a huge dope. How did that saying go? _Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt._

Still, if Bugsy could do it, he didn't see any reason why he couldn't. He might not have been poet material either, but at least he knew astronomical sun-phases. Maybe there was just some trick, some tact he didn't know and hadn't learned yet which was honestly an attractive idea. Max enjoyed learning new things.

He stopped rubbing his mouth and brought his hand to his ear, working the lobe between thumb and forefinger, as he turned to look at his older companion. He knit his brow. He could ask Brock about it, but honestly if there was someone who knew how to look like a total idiot as soon as he opened his mouth, it was Brock, particularly if there was a girl involved.

Part of him found it hard to believe that Brock would ever give unsound advice, though, even about such a thing as this. Brock had practical knowledge you just couldn't find in a book, and what was chiefly what he was looking for. Maybe if he asked the question in such a way that it seemed like he was asking something else... He didn't exactly want to have to discuss Dawn in any such light with Brock, at any rate, no matter how earnest the advice he would give.

He thought for a moment longer about how best to go about it, but then cracked a smile. He could ask Brock a question that would solve both his problems! Pokémon and people weren't so different, right? Maybe what would work for Onix would work for Dawn, too. He felt a moment of exasperation when he inadvertently pictured Onix in a pink skirt. He shook that thought out of his head as best he could.

Brock, quietly watching the flurry of conflicted expressions from the otherwise stalwart young trainer, surmised that he was second-guessing his arithmetic, and so was a little surprised when Max posed to him a simple, and solitary question so fundamentally different from battle-math.

"Brock," he asked, "how do you get Pokémon to like you?"

Brock raised his eyebrows, and sat back a little in his seat. He'd expected something more complex, really. Then again, the question was its own little conundrum in and of itself, once he really thought about it. Brock crossed, then uncrossed his arms, and then eventually settled into a reclined position, and threw one leg over his knee. "Well, the same way you get anyone to like you, I suppose."

"How is that?" Max asked, evidently none too pleased with the short version. In truth, though, the more all-encompassing an answer Brock gave, the more useful it would be.

Now it was Brock, thoughtfully rubbing at his mouth. "That's…" Brock found his eyes widening in surprise, as the answer eluded him. He set his knuckles to his lip and assumed the archetypical "thinker's pose", and gave a long gaze at the floor. "Wow."

Max reeled. He hadn't expected the answer to be so profound. He prepared himself for the information that would undoubtedly come, widening his mind like the opening of a container, ready to receive content.

"Well, there's not really just one surefire way, Max. Pokémon are no different than people. What works for some, won't always work for others."

Max blinked, then nodded, accepting that as fundamentally true. He wanted to steer this back on course, though, so he provided an addendum to his question. "I think…_Onix_…must find me kind of plain."

Brock looked Max up and down, with a lopsided smile. Ostensibly, Max _was _plain. He'd modeled himself after a younger Ash, but there was truly little about him that was flashy. Brock was sure that anybody who didn't know Max would pass him over for just another average trainer. Brock didn't care about any of that, though. Every day on this journey, he learned something new about Max that impressed him, beyond even what he'd already known, which was not inconsiderable.

"Max, buddy, let me tell you something;" Brock started, reaching out to pat Max on the arm. "Changing the way people see you isn't so hard, if they don't really know you yet." The older trainer smiled. "If you show them what you are all about and they still don't like you, that's their problem, but until then, how can they know how awesome you really are? I'm sure all Onix really needs to see is that you want to work together as a team. You gotta show Onix that you want his help, and that he should trust you to help him in kind."

Max blinked. "Do you think that will work? I-I dunno if I'd know what to say."

Brock shrugged. In the end, the only one who could truly say what Onix might do, was Onix. If he chose to continue to have no respect for Max, that was just how it would be, until Max somehow managed to gain it. Still, Brock couldn't think of a reason why earnest talk wouldn't get Max what he wanted. He'd already shown he was a competent and skillful trainer, simply by capturing the immense Pokémon, so Brock had to figure that it was a simple matter of trust. "Just go with your gut, Max. It's worked for you so far."

Max, now filled with a heady steam of confidence, sprang upright, one fist clenched tight. "I-I will!"

It surprised Brock when the junior trainer took the steps two at a time and descended to the arena floor. To desperately lunge at the face of the opposition seemed like more of an Ash-type move, honestly. It surprised him even more so when, instead of issuing an immediate challenge, he made a beeline for Dawn.

Max had to stutter-step a few times, so as not to arrive in the middle of one of the two of them talking—which was hard, because Bugsy wouldn't shut up—but eventually, after he had raised and lowered his hand several times, he finally found the proper moment to reach out and tug gently on the back of Dawn's sleeve.

"Can I talk to you?"

Dawn turned to look at him over her shoulder, expression still a bit icy. They'd feuded yesterday, and she evidently still hadn't forgotten that. "…About what?"

Man squinted a little under the glare, but tried to keep his smile up. "I need your help with something."

Dawn's expression softened at those words and she relented, turning more fully to face him. "S-Sure, Max. Gimme a second, and I'll meet you in the lobby, alright?"

And Brock watched, confused, from above, he found that he could not retire his expression of deep thought. Max certainly did have his quirks. He finally broke from his pose, when a buzzing in his pocket seized his attention. He withdrew his gear. It was May.

He flicked it open, and adjusted the screen in front of himself so that he was within its viewing angle. "Hey, May, how are things back home?" Following a tour through Johto, May had returned to her own region to take on the ribbon-circuit once more.

May stared for a second and it made Brock feel a little strange. He realized that it was signal-lag, though, after she broke into a smile. Hoenn was a fair clip from Johto, after all.

"Things are great! I just got done filling out my electronic entry-forms for the Grand Festival!" She cheered.

"Already? That's great!"

"Yep, four of my contest ribbons were still valid, and I just took my fifth!" She held it up to the camera of her own gear. Its frilly pink and purple bow pegged it for a Hoenn contest ribbon, sure enough.

Brock spoke to congratulate her, but a chorus of groaning cut him off, across the time delay. May turned her head and exchanged a few words, and then a she laughed dismissively. "Drew is still steamed, coz I whipped him in the Battle Round."

"Me and Roserade were _way _more stylish in the Appeals Round!" Drew moaned, somewhere off camera.

"Too bad you can't _lose_ with style," May commented, waving her hand to hush her slighted rival.

"That's great, May, I'm really happy for you!" Brock finally managed. "So what are you going to do for the next ten months?"

May eventually nodded after the silent pause. "Well, for the time being we're gonna keep kicking around Hoenn until Drew is festival-eligible again."

"Oh, don't do me any favors!" Drew groaned, still somewhere nearby obviously, but invisible.

"—And then, who knows. Maybe we'll make a quick tour of Sinnoh, and do two contest-circuits this year!"

Brock nodded. "Very industrious. So, what was the reason you called?"

"Just to check up on my little brother," May replied with a shrug. "What's that little bookworm up to?"

Brock chuckled. "Funny you should put it that way. We're in Azalea right now. Your brother is getting ready to take another shot at the Bug-type Gym. You know the one?"

May giggled at the inadvertent wordplay. "Yeah, sure. Bugsy, right? The Hive Badge. I remember hearing about him when I was there. How's it going? I notice you said _another_ shot."

Brock rubbed the back of his neck. "He's struggling a little. I don't want to seem too disparaging, though. He's at a big disadvantage here, type-wise, and he pretty much blew through every expectation I had of him, during his last gym-battle, where the odds were also stacked in his opponents favor. He's handling it pretty well, so far. I think we can expect him to work something out. "

May had, of course, heard about that battle when Max had called her last. Her little brother might not've been much of a braggart, but he certainly understood sibling rivalry very well, now that he was finally of training age. She had every confidence that Max would try to match her contest accomplishments with training ones, tit for tat, and beyond if he was able. "Mind if I talk to him?"

"I don't," Brock began, "but he just stepped out with Dawn," he explained, watching the blunette extricate herself from the conversation with Bugsy.

May nodded. "Those two doing better, then? Max said she was making him feel a little, uh…awkward."

Brock shrugged. "You know how boys and girls are. If they're _not _fighting, _that's_ when you start worrying."

May sucked in her bottom lip, and nodded. "Right, right." That wasn't really what she'd meant, but it was close enough, even if it was from an inverse perspective. Maybe she would be better off telling Brock of her suspicions, but there was no sense in raising alarms. Max was ten! She didn't see what some harmless hand-holding and cheek-kissing would do, even if it came as total surprise to Brock.

Of course, maybe it was just that she felt like she'd be making herself into an enormous hypocrite, if she told on her little brother. "Tell him I called, will you? I wanna know how this battle goes."

"I will."

She said her goodbyes, and clapped the gear shut. "You done boo-hooing?" she asked, looking down at the head in her lap. Drew had the back of his hand laid over his eyes, and was pretending to sob.

The green-haired coordinator gave snort of laughter, but then plastered on a phony pout. "No. Just a little more…" He pretended to wail; "From Hoenn Top Two, to this! I used to be a contender!"

"What a baby! You were the Runner-Up, I don't see what you're so humiliated about." she complained, and straightened her leg, letting his head thunk against the floor. Well, almost. Drew had the composure to catch his own head, at least, with the hand he'd been using to shield his eyes.

"I was sort of hoping for a little sympathy, to soothe my crumbling pride, yanno? This is high-quality emotion, here. I'm baring my soul right now, and this is how you treat me?" Drew asked, with a trademark smirk.

"Yeah, right." May snorted. "Go bare your soul to someone who cares."

Drew just laughed again. Over the past year, May'd learned to keep pace with his teasing, cavalier attitude, and if anything, she'd come full-circle now, to be the one who frequently dominated their interaction with one another. She could be fiery and icy all at once, and it was really enjoyable to have someone to trade verbal jabs with now and then. She was every bit as smart as him, and being of the fairer sex, she was twice as devious. He didn't mind being on the losing side so much lately, especially when it came to her more amorous interactions with him.

Not that he was going to say that outright. Better to keep her on her toes. "You wouldn't be interested in hearing what's on my mind, regarding your brother, then, I suppose?"

May pulled a face, then flicked his nose. "What of it?"

Drew ignored the irritation, as though it was beneath contempt. "Oh, I hardly think you'd want to hear it."

May licked her teeth, and gave just the slightest twitch of her brow. Drew knew that May was something of a romantic, and that it was a struggle for her not to stick her nose in her little brother's business. Likewise, he knew it was a dirty trick, but that didn't matter at the moment.

May's twitching brow returned, and she seemed to be deliberating about a good way to get him to speak up, but without making it seem like she cared at all, which was obviously what he wanted her to do. Such a way didn't come to her, though, and so she crossed her own arms, and sighed. "Well, what _do_ you think about it?"

Drew sat up, and spun in place on the floor, where he'd been laying, to face her from the front, rather than below. "I think that it's good for your brother to have his first crush."

May bristled. "I don't see how."

Drew shrugged, and tapped her lightly on the nose. "I met my first crush on the road."

"Aww, that's so sweet." May, sappy to a fault, cooed like he knew she would, which made it hard to hold in a laugh.

"Yup. Met her on my way through Hoenn…" he sighed, passionately.

When he continued, in displeased monotone, he had to weave away from a series of well-aimed, angry swipes. "Never saw her again, unfortunately, so I had to settle for you."

Gradually, she did manage to get a good hold on him, and deliver a few stinging pinches to his midsection. "See? Runner-up isn't so much fun, is it?!" he laughed, amidst the sharp abuse, wincing only a little.

"You're awful!" she howled, though she too was trying hard not to giggle.

Once her irritated reprisal had diminished some, he sat holding her wrists, with a huge grin. "Seriously, though, I think this will be good for Max. And not just this thing he's got going on for that girl, but just being able to get out there on his own, without you looking over his shoulder all the time."

She seemed to want to take it for subtly veiled insult, but he'd honestly been sincere. Either way, she deflated a bit in his grasp.

"Let him sort it out, alright? Your brother's a smart kid, you know that."

May went from looking put out to stricken, and every bit about her that had been prickly vanished into the worrying of a doting older sister, which was what she really was, beneath it all, even if she acted strict with Max, and matched his beguiling ways stride for stride. "Just because he's smart doesn't mean he's ready! What if he messes it up, or if she likes someone else, or—"

Drew shook his head. "Max will know how to handle it. He's really bright." May looked ready to express more doubts, so he went on; "And even if he doesn't, he'll learn. Sometimes, things don't turn out how we plan, and we have to figure out how to pick up the pieces. Not everyone gets it right on the first try."

The verbal barbs came back out in force. May wriggled her hand free and poked him in the chest with it. "Sorta like with you and your Hoenn mystery woman, huh?"

He shrugged, and arrested her efforts again, with more derision. "I haven't cashed in my chips yet, where that's concerned. She could still be out there, somewhere."

She shrieked in frustration, and the whole thing quickly turned into a flurry of her attempts at trying to bonk him over the head, but he elegantly deflected all of them, until her annoyance simmered off. He smirked. He liked that it was so easy to push her buttons, really. It made it easier to keep pace with her, since she was so adept in other areas of their back and forth repartee. Not to mention, it made her interesting.

She wasn't like other people he'd met on his journey, who you could always expect to react in a certain way, given the correct motivations. Sometimes, even after having spent a whole year by her side, May would still do and say things that took him completely by surprise. More importantly, though, she always reacted. She hadn't tired of him—or he of her—and that excitement, mostly, was what had kept them together as traveling coordinators. She grew passionate be it in anger or in affection (and sometimes it was both) though they had been together, at least in some capacity similar to the one they were now, since halfway through their journey through Johto.

He wasn't afraid that the intensity of their relationship would dim with time, really. Unlike him, May was just starting to hit her stride as a coordinator and he knew that he'd follow her wherever it took her, because he was in _love_. Maybe it was puppy-love, or whatever, but it was still the best thing he'd ever felt in his whole life, and he wasn't about to give it up.

All that said, it was probably too early to count himself out of the Coordinating game.. Drew was still a high-ranking contest-winner and in Johto. He hadn't lost to just _anyone_, while he was there. His quarterfinal opponent had been one of the three Waterflower sisters, after all, and it was they who had gone on to beat Solidad and Harley as well, before sweeping the entire competition and snatching the Cup out May's hands.

Those three were really something, but this year they would gun for two Festivals in a few-month stretch, and there wasn't a chance that those three could shut them out of both, no matter how good everyone thought they were. May was _so_ much better than she had been before, and his skills certainly hadn't waned any.

Things between them personally had become so much easier now, too. For almost six months they'd had to duck and dodge Harley and Solidad just to be alone with each other and that was hard enough in and of itself, alongside travel and training time, much less with the gear-up and gear-down between competitions.

His confession to her had been elegant and perfect, and not so forthcoming that it sounded exactly like a love-confession, which was just the way he liked it, but their trysts following had been something of a nightmare. He couldn't count the number of times they'd nearly been caught in not so flattering states by Solidad—or worse, by Harley—wandering into their rooms without knocking. He was fairly certain that Harley would've blackmailed one of the two of them and Solidad likely wouldn't have approved much at any rate, even if she'd have kept her mouth closed about it.

Still, he thought with a lopsided grin, if Solidad hadn't come looking for May after their collective defeat at the Johto Grand Festival he might've gotten May to take off more than her bra. Hell, he'd been halfway out of his _own _skivvies at that point, to be honest.

Not that he'd ever done anything untoward to May. At least, not anything she hadn't expressly invited him to do…

The disrobing had been mostly her idea, and he had been all but too eager to take up his end of the seemingly harmless dare she'd challenged him to. He couldn't even really remember that part now, since it had been so overshadowed by what had come after. Probably some half-innocent "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" set-up. Fearlessly, he'd taken off a piece of clothing for every one she'd lost, and more. Unlike her, he didn't feel as though he had anything to be embarrassed about—not in front of her, at least—and he'd enjoyed every second of her increasing timidity and blushing, as she realized he wasn't going to back down.

Or at least, he'd enjoyed it until the moment had been spoiled. Then there had been mostly panic. Still, if he thought hard about it, the pinkness of her exposed breasts had been completely bared to him in those seconds as she frantically grabbed for her clothes. May had bloomed early and plenty, and the poor thing had too much there to cover with just one hand, he remembered, calling back a mental image of that precise moment with a bit more intensity.

That hadn't been the last time he'd seen her with her shirt off, but something about it had made it the most arousing. He shook his head, to clear some of the fog from it.

By necessity, with what scarce private time they'd shared on the road in Johto, and in trying to keep their relationship under wraps, they hadn't exactly taken things slow. Their advances toward each other had gotten pretty hot and heavy before, he supposed, but they hadn't gone all the way yet, either. He didn't mind that at all. He liked to tease and be teased, if only for the simple excitement of it, but he prided himself on being a gentleman. As a man, he was essentially bound to go all in every time, but if May wanted him to back off he'd oblige her just as readily.

…Because the truth was, eventually, she'd get herself so worked up that she'd take things to the next level all on her own, panting and scarlet-faced, just like she always did. She couldn't fool him into believing she didn't like it just as much as him, no matter how hard she tried.

Now, since it was just the two of them, they decided when and where they went, and what they did when they got there, separate or together. Still, it wasn't all hanky-panky. Contest training took up a lot of time, probably more now than it ever had; May was shooting for the stars—and he had to do his best to stay at the top of his performance, if only just to seem like he wasn't some hanger-on—but they got significantly more time to be with each other in private with much less apprehension, _especially _since Max had found someone else to go on his first journey with, and left the two of them by themselves.

He realized, grin fading, that maybe May still felt a little guilty about that. She'd spent months training and preparing the both of them for the idea. "_Max likes to ask questions and recite facts, and tell you all sorts of things, really. Whatever comes to mind. He's just like that, is all, so please don't be mean to him, even if he gets on your nerves!"_ she would remind him, over and over. _"Drew isn't really arrogant, even if he seems like he is. That's just how he acts. Don't get upset, even if he seems like he's making fun of you,"_ she would tell her brother, again and again, prepping the two of them for cohabitation, as though they'd never met one another. Drew assured her that everything would be fine, just as he was sure Max did, but evidently, she was a firm believer that greater familiarity between the two of them would surely breed contempt.

Now that he gave her a long look, he was sure that May was having second thoughts about it, actually. She liked to pretend that her and Max were a world apart, but he knew it had been hard for her to decide to go to Johto without him, much less send him off to begin his journey with someone besides her. Still, she couldn't have put him in better hands than Brocks, and she had to realize that. Besides, it wasn't like she'd deflected him, or pushed him off on the others. She'd been asked to travel with Brock and his friend Dawn first, and refusing that, had suggested the idea of asking Max. Her brother had essentially made all those arrangements by himself. May hadn't even had the heart to _encourage_ him as much as she ought to have. In fact, she'd even asked Max if he was sure he didn't want to come with her, though she'd tried to do that much outside of Drew's own noticing.

"I think this whole idea of Max going to Johto was brilliant." He casually sat back at her side, and looped his arm around her shoulders. "I might be a little biased, though."

She elbowed his ribs. "Of course you are, horndog."

He coughed, then chuckled, slightly guilty. "Can you blame me? Who wouldn't want what I've got all to myself?"

May popped her eyebrows at him, playing the obvious hard-to-get role. "And just what is it that you think you've _got_, huh?" She swiveled in her seat, and turned so that her leg was tossed over his lap. She raised it as though for his inspection, straightening her ankle to a ballet pointe.

She was disappointed for a moment, when he didn't even bother to look at it. She'd have liked him to have been allured by its shapeliness. That displeasure lasted only the briefest moment though, because instead, he simply threw his arm over it, and used it in concert with a hand at her hip to whip her into a straddling position. She would've barked some teasing protest, but his mouth was hot and insistent on hers, and his hands worked her over in that desperate way, as though they could not find the place that was their favorite, though they tested and grasped at nearly everything else while they sought it out.

In the end, they settled with two huge handfuls of her bottom, after shooting lightning-fast fingertips down the back of her bike-shorts. She reached around to catch his wrists, and while she didn't force him to release, she made sure his surge went no further. As always, he didn't struggle or protest, but neither did he let her voice any complaint. His kiss deepened and became more urgent, until she was no longer astride him but instead falling backwards, as he bore down from above.

Long minutes passed before he finally let up on her. Now, plainly, he was the one balanced overtop, his hands appropriated to either side of her. She huffed in gasps of air and tried to work her hair out of her eyes, but he hardly seemed disheveled at all. She felt a flush rising up her neck. Drew had talent at more than just coordinating.

"You tell me," he prompted. "What _do_ I have?"

She might've told him off, said something crass and mocking, just as he probably would've, if he'd been the one on the floor, but all she wanted to do were things she knew she shouldn't. Her face burned, her heart hammered, and for just a brief second she began to grab for him, lips parted, to return to their desirous kissing and fondling. Drew took the decision out of her hands, though.

He stood and he smirked, just like he always did. "I'll be back after a while. I need to pick up Masquerain from Nurse Joy, and go visit the Move Tutor here in town." Stepping into his shoes, he gave her a wink as he slung his pack over his shoulder, and spun his key to their room at the Center around one finger.

He'd decided that he'd teach Masquerain the move Attract before his next contest. If May tried that same crap in the Battle Round during their next contest, well, sometimes ideas just came to you, and you had to run with them.

He left her just that way, unfulfilled and exasperated on the floor of their room, his quiet laughter echoing back to her down the hall. It was a double-edged sword, she found, because the angrier she got at him for bailing on her, the hotter and more flustered she became. The worst part, she knew, was that it was all according to his master plan. Even worse, a part of her that she didn't entirely trust seemed not to care in the slightest.

* * *

He let himself in. It was his house, after all. Or, at least, it was in name. They didn't call it the Ketchum residence for nothing. He wasn't sure it had ever really felt like home to him, though. She had rearranged the furniture in the living room since he'd last been here, but he got his bearings after a moment. It didn't seem like anybody was home. He was at a loss over what to do, when that realization came to him.

If she wasn't home, then there was no point. This was so barely his home to begin with that without her, he may as well have been standing in the living room of a total stranger. He let go of a desperate groan.

He would wait, he guessed. One arm still laden, he took the remote from the coffee table and switched on the TV. The news was on.

"_If you're just now joining us, we're taking you live to the Unova League HQ, where a new champion has just been inducted! Iris, just thirteen, formerly the gym-leader of Opelucid City, was coronated in a formal ceremony this morning as the youngest trainer ever to claim the Unovan title," _a news-reporter updated, unseen, as the screen displayed the coronation itself, full of pomp and elegance.

Blossom-petals showered over the young girl as she descended the staircase in front of the massive, castle-like complex. In her pink, bustled dress and tiara, she waved to the crowd and smiled. She was a perfect symbol of innocence, youth and progress. She was everything the fans and the media wanted to see.

In truth, though, Silver knew she was a scapegoat, perfect though she might've been. She was everything the media was looking for, because Charles Goodshow had planned it that way, and anyone in the know would've been a fool to think different. With this, the news of the Battle Tower would go nearly unnoticed. People tired easily of bad news, and were fickle with their interests and attentions.

By Monday morning, people would be talking about this new, sweet-looking girl of a champion, and forgetting that there had ever been a Battle Tower at all. Iris was all too convenient a political deception to be anything but.

He sighed, and shut the TV off. Best if he didn't have it on when Deliah came in anyway, just in case they did run something about the Battle Tower. It would probably just raise a bunch of concerns he had no desire to alleviate, and she'd likely end up asking him more questions about their son that he just couldn't answer.

He still didn't know what the hell Ash was doing in the Pokémon Corps, but he damn sure wasn't going to tell Deliah. All he'd offered her when they'd spoken on the phone about his absence from Mandarin Isle was that he knew where Ash was, and that he was fine. Luckily, she'd accepted that. He doubted she would if given such an indication of danger in the region as what she might learn if she read between the lines.

He thought he'd knocked something over as he set down the remote. A shattering, glass sound froze him in place, wincing. But no, he realized, the sound had come from behind him. He turned slowly in place.

"D-Darling?" Deliah gasped, gardening gloves falling from her hand in the same way as the drinking glass had. She'd evidently been out working in the garden, preparing it for summer, and come in to quench her thirst just after he'd arrived.

He didn't say anything at first, finding his voice lost. It did feel nice to see her in person, without the video screen between them, but his heart was too heavy to smile. "I'm home for a bit."

She flew to him, shoes crunching through the broken glass, arms spread, but he stopped her, palm outstretched. "Wait."

It was then, she realized that something had gone terribly wrong. Silver had never been overtly affectionate, but he'd never outright denied her. She bounced softly against his hand, refusing to be any further away than he would otherwise permit. "What is it?"

He showed it to her, daring only to expose just a bit of his poor friend from beneath the coat. It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing, so shocking was it. When it finally struck her, she wanted to wail aloud, to burst forth with the sudden sadness that knifed into her heart like an icicle, but she bit her lip.

For as long as she'd known Silver, and longer, Chikorita had been there. She'd cherished that Pokémon dearly as well. Her son had grown up knowing that cute little grass-type! She wanted to scream and cry just as she was sure he did, to throw herself against the tiny bundle and shudder with grief, but she couldn't.

Silver had come her for a reason. It was the same reason Ash had come to see her. Silver was here because he needed her to prop him up. Because he was falling off center and he needed her to catch him. She knew that, just the same way she had known when Ash had been here two months ago.

The Ketchum men were strong and stubborn, and they did not fall easily, but when they did, they fell hard. She couldn't crumble, couldn't give way to that cold pain of loss, because she needed to stand strong and keep her husband from doing the same. She was the support beam of this family, however stretched its foundations might've been. She was what held all of them upright, and rooted them to one place.

She might've lived a lonely life at times, mother and wife to trainers, but she held her place firmly, whatever it took. She was crying, she knew, because she could feel the hot tears prick at the corner of her eyes, but she wiped them briskly, and did not so much as sob. "What happened?"

Silver, eyes hard and hollow, lied to her face, because he knew he had to. "An accident," he said, in a dull voice. "My fault."

Deliah let out a protracted gasp, which he guessed was for his benefit, but he persisted in his lie by omission. "Salamence and I took a bad fall. I came out okay. Salamence is pretty banged up, but Chikorita took…" His throat seized up, refusing passage to the last words of his sentence, until he took a guilty swallow. "Chikorita took the worst of it…"

"Silver," she protested, grasping for his shirt. He did not repel her this time, but neither did he embrace her. He could only look down at the dead Pokémon in his arms.

"There wasn't anything I could do," he choked. "She was already gone when I woke up."

"Silver," she urged again, grasping for the trench-coat. "Let me take her."

An angry urge to refuse her, to rip away and shout, welled up in him fiercely but it died just as quickly. Deliah took Chikorita from him, cradling the small Pokémon with all the gentleness and dignity that a mother might; showing compassion that rarely existed outside blood kin, and even more seldom crossed the species barrier. It put him greatly at ease.

A Mr. Mime, who Silver had heard tell of, but had not yet met with face to face, crossed over the threshold then, and for a moment, squared off with him. He must've seemed like an intruder here, after all. He gave the Pokémon a gauging look, and was reciprocated in kind.

"Mimey," Deliah said quietly, breaking the tension between them. "Would you clean this up?" she nodded to the broken glass on the floor.

"Mime!" the psychic-type bleated.

"Thank you, Mimey." She ushered Silver along by his sleeve, as they stepped past the Pokémon. "Please stay inside until I come get you."

It must've seemed like an unusual request, because Mr. Mime made a bit of a face at her, but eventually he did nod.

They buried Chikorita in the garden, between the rose bushes. Silver stomped the shovel into the earth until his hands were raw and his brow sheened, and longer, refusing to rest until the task was done, while Deliah sat quietly in the grass nearby.

She made sure she was the one to lay the little Pokémon in the earth, because she knew that it would break Silver's heart if he had to be the one to do it. In truth though, she did feel her own heart cracking, as the first shovel-full of dirt was slung over Chikorita's makeshift, corduroy casket, eventually covering the little grass type they would never see again.

She stepped away when Silver was finished, and tossed away the shovel. She thought, mistakenly that this was a moment that her husband needed to have alone, to pay his own respects to his starter, the one soul who'd known him better than any other, and shared his entire career.

She was wrong, though, she realized, when Silver sank to his knees. Like her, his grief was silent, yet not out of any dedication. It was simply that he'd already gone well past any normal threshold of emotion that there was an associated sound for. He held himself upright with handfuls of grass, and swayed, his back heaving and shuddering. It wasn't that she'd never seen Silver get choked up, or never known him to cry, but she'd watched him take losses big and small, been right there with him for some of them, and she'd never once even imagined seeing him this way. Of all the things she'd yet seen, the sight of her husband crying his guts out, weeping so hard and deep that he couldn't even breathe, rocked her to the core.

She ran back to him, skidding on her knees down beside him, and took him in with wide arms. Silver was a big, big man. He dwarfed her considerably, but she supported him, emotionally, as well as physically, holding him upright on both counts.

"She was my best friend," Silver croaked, voice so tortured she wanted to die. Her own tears leaked out, betraying her strength, but she only held him tighter. There was nothing she could say that would make that better. There was only what was, and she had no power to change that.

They said that mothers were gods to their children. When her boy had been younger, with simply a word, she could dry tears, ignite a laugh, erase all the problems in the world with only a reassurance and a hug. She had slowly come to realize she was losing that power, over the past several years, and she hated it. It made her feel powerless as a mother, and it was even harder as a wife. Once, too, she'd had the power to change his world, to haze away the fatigues and the woes with intimacy and providence.

Not now. She was only mortal, after all. She loved Silver with everything she had, and there was still nothing she could do to un-break his heart. Chikorita was gone, and so too was the chunk of Silver's soul she'd once filled. She could and would give anything at all for him, but what she had, simply would not fit in the hole that Chikorita's loss had left.

Still, she had to try, powerless or not. That was who she was. Holding this family and the people in it together was what defined her. She couldn't keep them all under one roof, but she had to try and give them the same comfort and solidarity that only family could provide, in any way she could.

She'd never thought of her relationship with Silver as strained, but that was probably what it was. The man was her legal husband, and that had never changed. She loved him to death, and that had never changed either. Still, she couldn't say that she'd ever really come first in Silver's life. Granted, there were certainly no other women ahead of her—that much she could trust in, at least—but her husband had never thought much of her ideals regarding the closeness of family, it seemed.

Yes, Silver had been there for their son in the early years, and he continued to be the chief financial benefactor of the family, but Silver had never surrendered the road, his travels and his childhood dreams, and she supposed it was her fault for not forcing him to. Yet who was she to stomp out his desires, even if what she wanted was for him to come home to her, and stop forcing her to live out her life with him through the videophone?

She couldn't do it to her son, and she couldn't do it to him. It hurt her, but she lived with it.

Still, she'd never wanted to be a scornful woman, even in her heart. She'd never desired to be the one to issue forth complaints, or hard-heartedness to Silver. She loved him!

But there had to be a certain expectation of that on Silver's part. He probably expected her to be cold to him, after close to six years of being away. For someone else, maybe that would've been true. There would have at least been some barrier there, to surmount. Someone else might've built up a wall in their heart, to separate themselves from their longing, to forget how much they missed someone by making themselves chilly, and divorcing themselves from that heartache, thus.

She never did that. She longed for Silver every day. That meant, that for close to two-thousand days, now, without him being there even once, she'd never dismissed a thought of him from her mind. She thought of him at night before she closed her eyes, in the morning, when she opened them again, and when she dreamed about him in the middle.

Yes, that did bring her heart-ache. Yes, that did make her feel impatient, and lonesome, and all those other things. But she'd never given herself over to insensitivity. Instead, she simply smiled when it hurt. Not because of it, but at least in spite of it.

She was just as ready now to love and be loved in return by Silver, as she had half a decade ago, when she and her nine-year-old son had stood waving to him from the hilly approach to Route 1 on the day that Silver had resumed his journey.

And now, more than anything else she wanted him to know that. She _needed_ him to know that, if she was to do anything to help him that might make a difference. He had to know that there was nothing in her heart that had changed toward him.

She lifted her arms from his huge back, sliding her hands up his neck, until she could grasp the side of his face. She lifted it, from aside her own, so that she could look into his eyes.

He didn't look like the same man. Silver had always had gray hair, even as a boy, but he looked very old and tired at that moment. They were both making a push toward forty, and in spite of the fact that he was only a bit closer than she was, he looked about as old as the professor. All the weight of sorrow was bearing down on him, doing its best to crush the life out of him, it seemed, and he aged before her eyes.

She worried, for a moment, that she would be of no use to him, just as she'd worried that she would be of no use to her son, when she'd seen him this way, only a short time prior. But she felt her own tears dry upon her cheeks, and she knew that sometimes, people needed to hear the people who loved them say what was really in their heart, to bounce back. Sometimes, all people needed to hear, was that their loved ones had faith in them, and were there to support them, that they weren't just doing what was expected of them and going through the motions, but that they really cared. Sometimes, all people needed to get through, was a little love.

And she had lots of that to give.

"I don't think there's anything that I could say or do to make this better…" she said, holding his face level with hers, eyes locked to his. "But I will never, _ever_ stop trying."

* * *

Max and Dawn had come back with smiles on their faces. More than that, really, they'd had grins from ear to ear. The devious kind, and that much was painfully obvious. Brock had met them head on with a disapproving frown, but that hadn't slowed them down in the slightest. Instead, they'd simply told him face front what their plan was.

"Double battle!" they chimed in unison.

He liked their exuberance, and also the amount of rapport they'd rebuilt between themselves in the twenty minutes he'd left them to themselves, but he wasn't so sure that was going to work. He told them just that, but they mowed him over again.

"All he needs is another person to battle on his side. That's where you come in."

He knit his brows. "Me? I can't battle against you guys! That wouldn't be fair."

"Why not?" Dawn complained.

"Yeah, you're a Gym Leader, right? What's the problem?"

He skipped a few of the more obvious ones. "You guys are my friends. What if Bugsy thinks I'm going to throw my end of the match to you?"

"We know you wouldn't do that," Max assured.

"Yeah, Brock. We know you're a stand-up guy."

"Okay, assuming that I even agree to this, what makes you think you can get Bugsy to agree to this?"

Dawn cleared her throat, and flattened out her eyebrows, as though the answer was obvious. Max, however, was slightly taken aback by the question. "Yeah, how are we gonna do that?" he queried.

Dawn shrugged in an offhanded way. "Just gotta hit him with the _eyelashes_," she fluttered her eyelids for effect, making doe-eyes at Max. She snapped her fingers. "Bam. Like putty."

He had to admit, the look did make him feel pretty malleable. He nodded his accord. Brock however, just looked less certain than before. At least until Dawn turned the "eyelashes" on him, and Max followed it up with pouty-face. He sighed through his nose, and relented. "Alright, alright, fine."

Brock didn't do much battling of late, but he still had experience in miles on the two of them, so he tried to make his choices based on what he felt the youngster duo would have realistically been able to compete with. He dug in his bag, and eventually went with Marshtomp, Ludicolo and Sudowoodo. They didn't put up strong typing competition, or anything, but they would be a decent complement to Bugsy's own Pokémon, at any rate.

Dawn soon casually returned with Bugsy in tow. It seemed as though he'd easily and fully committed to the idea, given his interest in the blunette, just as she'd expected.

Brock was sure neither he nor Bugsy expected the very well-coordinated beat down that was laid on them shortly thereafter, however. When he'd heard them come up with the idea of a double-battle, he'd expected that Dawn would primarily be helping Max with Bugsy's Pokémon using type-matchups in her favor, while they did their best to exclude him from the fight. Their ultimate objective had to be Bugsy, after all, since he was the only one who could give the young trainer a hive badge. Of course, he'd been fully planning to rain on that parade by being very disruptive, yet in complete disregard for the preconceptions he'd established, Dawn and Max switched roles, and focused down their opposite number.

That was how he and Bugsy had both lost their first Pokémon before the match had ever really begun. At Dawn and Max's command, Quilava and Ralts crisscrossed each other to beeline at Metapod and Sudowoodo with Flamethrower and Magic Leaf, respectively. Metapod's thick shell held for a time, but Sudowoodo took a critical hit and went out like a light, and he had to be withdrawn.

Before he could get another Pokémon out on the field, Max's Pokémon ganged up with Quilava in taking Metapod out of commission. Brock picked his second Pokémon based on what he was seeing, which was, of course, that Max was going to use his type advantage over his own Pokémon to isolate the battle between Dawn's Pokémon, which were all undoubtedly strong against Bug-type, and Bugsy's. Since Marshtomp was even weaker against grass-type than Sudowoodo, he sent out Ludicolo.

Bugsy, evidently realizing the same but with no type-variation available to him, simply sent out his strongest Pokémon, Scyther. Fearing a surge of knockouts were he to do otherwise, the young gym-leader put the Pokémon on the offensive.

"Fury Cutter!" Bugsy ordered, aiming his Scyther toward Max's Ralts.

He likewise set Ludicolo upon Quilava. "Water gun!"

But Max, ever the planner, and Dawn, a schemer in her own right, again, did something that neither of Gym-Leaders could have predicted, yet again. Ignoring Scyther entirely, Dawn and Max both sent their Pokémon rushing straight at Ludicolo, and directly away from Scyther, avoiding the engagement entirely. With a little pointing from Dawn, Max ordered Ralts in the lead position, to take the brunt of his Water Gun attack where it would do the least damage.

Ralts seemed to just devour the attack head-on, in much the same way you might expect a plant to do so. While not immune to water-type attacks, Ralts did resist them, and Water gun was not a particularly strong water-type attack to begin with. In turn, Ralts fired off another Magic Leaf at his trainer's command, hardly slowed at all by the minor deluge.

Ludicolo, though deceptively spry for its bulky appearance and able to dance away from the counter-attack, only ended up well within the strike zone for Quilava's up-coming attack. The Eruption move, which he'd seen Dawn use to great effect in contests proved to be every bit as powerful as it was flashy.

The massive jet of fire crashed into Ludicolo to dire effect. Dual type nature granted his Pokémon enough resistance to weather the massive offensive move, but still the hefty grass/water type was propelled backward, singed and burned by the heat and energy of Quilava's attack. Even that would've been fine, provided Ludicolo had stayed on his feet. Yet, even that was not to be. As Brock's Pokémon backpedaled to get away, Max's was waiting for him.

Grass Knot, the same move he'd used to great effect on Onix, snagged Ludicolo's stumpy leg and sent it tumbling onto its back. Too stunned and injured by the fall to scramble back up again, Ralts and Quilava quickly converged on it, and finished it off.

Scyther caught up with them then, and actually managed to do some damage to the two junior trainer's Pokémon. In fact, the surge seemed to come apart for Max and Dawn then, as their momentum finally ran out. Scyther was too fast for Quilava to turn and engage directly, and so it whizzed past, scoring a scoring a super-effective slashing hit with Fury Cutter on Ralts.

Max's Pokémon didn't go down immediately, but it was hurt badly and had to use its evasive Teleport to get any separation at all from the speedy bug-type. It wasn't a very effective tactic, since it separated Ralts further and further from Quilava with each successive Teleport. Truthfully, the fire-type was the only thing that could have hoped to even the odds. Ralts was powerful in its own way, but it just couldn't compete against a Pokémon that was both stronger and faster, as well as type-superior. Max had pulled through against Faulkner through use of TM 24, but he'd scrubbed off the last of his funds with the Technical Machine for Grass Knot, and had no such answer for bug types.

As Brock watched the look of helpless frustration flash from under Max's cool, professional veneer, he had no doubt that in a week's time, Ralts would know Will-O-Wisp, courtesy a newly purchased TM61. Brock had certain opinions about Max's evident lack of enthusiasm for catching a variety of Pokémon, and he figured that TMs were a good way to counteract that, but Max would still feel it in his wallet, if he kept it up.

Brock threw out another Pokémon to help with the counter-offensive, with the realization that this was actually his third and final Pokémon of the six on six matchup. The worst part was that Marshtomp was in grave danger from the jump, and would remain in danger until Ralts was off the field. One Magic Leaf would likely obliterate the ground/water Pokémon, and there was very little he could do to change the course of nature.

Luckily, it didn't seem like Ralts would last much longer in this match, but the realization that Max and Dawn had, at this point, trounced them three to nothing, made him realize just how potent a combination they were. With Max's nearly encyclopedic knowledge of move-sets and tactics, complemented by Dawn's coordinator flair for risk-taking, and crucial sense of timing, the two were much greater than the sum of their parts.

Separately, Max and Dawn were very talented, and were surely bound for success in their careers. Together, Brock could see, they had the makings for greatness. All that stood in their way was inexperience, as they were about to find out.

Aiming a precise throw, Brock unleashed his Pokémon mid-field; well away from Ralts, but interdicting Quilava's path to aid its team-mate. As before, Dawn tried to order her Pokémon to ignore the obstacle, and go where it was needed. This time, though, Marshtomp was well between Quilava and the intended destination, and running from him would be nowhere near as simple as turning tail and charging away.

A clod of wet dirt, scooped from the field and saturated with water, caught the fire-type across the eyes, awakening both Pokémon and trainer to this fact. Mud Shot wasn't a particularly awe-inspiring attack, but it was unquestionably effective in this instance. Stunned by the appearance, and doggedness of this newest and most dangerous combatant, it seemed both Dawn and Quilava were at something of a loss as to how to react. Dawn gave an order, then belayed it, then countermanded it all in the span of a few seconds, leaving the fire-type in confusion. The gym leader did not hesitate, though, and ordered Marshtomp to finish it off with a Water Gun.

Brock, from the perspective of a veteran trainer, could understand what it meant to lose face in front of a battle that was rapidly turning south and he'd certainly been surprised more than once in all the battles he'd been in, throughout the years. Still, it was an amateur mistake that spoke of the relative inexperience Dawn had when it came to actual battling. A trainer had to be able to adapt a strategy on a split-second basis, because in the heat of a pitched fight, almost every preconceived tactic would lose integrity and eventually disintegrate. As it had once been said by Moltke, _no plan survives contact with the enemy. _

Like any skilled coordinator—which she certainly was, however her more practical battling experience might've lacked—Dawn managed to put a good face on it. Rather than entrench herself firmly into the conflict with Brock, she looked sideways to see how Max and Ralts were faring.

It turned out to be quite poorly. Ralts had flashed away from Scyther yet again but the little Pokémon's Teleport finally gave up the ghost. Exhausted, Max's Pokémon could neither flee nor retaliate, and Bugsy's Scyther came on with vigor, sickle-like claws gleaming. The blade rose high into the air and with a hiss, the bug-type brought it screaming down.

Max's eyes flew wide as it collided with a clang, not upon Ralts' head where he believed it surely would, but upon a single, massive tusk. With an accurate throw of her own, Dawn had put her own Pokémon on the field. Mamoswine, huge and imposing, met the down stroke with an almost lazy heave, which still managed to toss the relatively light Scyther backwards a few steps.

"Nice!" Max yelped in gratitude.

"No need to worry." Dawn smirked and winked at her partner before extending her hand, palm open. "I got your back."

Brock smiled as he watched the two of them high-five, a warm fuzzy sensation rising in his chest. He wondered why Ash and Misty had never quite seemed to bond in that way, during their sophomore outings. Ash and May had seen their moments, but for the most part, Ash had always seemed contemptuous of any assistance from Misty, even on the occasions when the red-head had seemed more than willing to give it. He wasn't sure he knew any two people more capable of grinding at the other's nerves, though, and he'd certainly never meet any two people more stubborn, so maybe it was no wonder.

One day, he decided, he'd out and out force them to get along in a more conventional way, so that maybe he might see something as pleasant as this, between the two of them. They might've been independent trainers with big careers now, but those two hot-heads could stand to learn a few things…

…Either that or they could just start sucking face like everyone had been quietly waiting for, over the past several years.

Shaking his head free of the thought, he brought Marshtomp around square with Scyther, to help against the massive opposition, shoring up their lines of attack just as Mamoswine moved itself into position to defend Max's injured and exhausted Pokémon. Brock was still well aware of the threat that Ralts represented to his final Pokémon, even weakened as he was.

He shared a look with Bugsy. It was time for a coordinated assault of their own. Lacking the time to hatch a plan together, they would need to rely a bit on intuition and foresight, yet when Bugsy withdrew his Scyther and sent forth his Kakuna, with a subtle glance in the direction of Mamoswine, Brock had an inkling of what to do next.

On their orders, Marshtomp and Kakuna took up position in column, Brock's Pokémon in the lead. Mamoswine would, as a matter of course, stay between Ralts and the opposition as a defensive measure, so it would only be a matter of side-stepping him to get what they wanted. It would be easier said than done, of course, but they could make it happen on their terms. Marshtomp was safe against Ralts' Magic Leaf, so long as Mamoswine stayed between them anyways, so there was yet another advantage he could take.

Marshtomp sent a Mud Shot straight at Mamoswine, testing it to see if it would try to move. If it did, Brock would send his own Pokémon on a straight charge in the opposite direction of which it dodged the attack. As he suspected, though, the enormous Pokémon didn't budge to one side or the other. It came on, straight through the attack, hardly bothered by it, in much the same way Ralts had earlier charged through water-gun. Brock didn't mind, since this would do just as well. "To the side, go for Ralts!" he hollered.

Marshtomp sprang sideways with much agility, ready as it knew it must be to dodge any potentially incoming Magic Leaf from their ailing target. It didn't come, though. What came instead, was Grass Knot. Brock could've sworn aloud as Marshtomp tripped and flopped to the floor of the arena rather than performing its neat side-step. Hadn't he just gotten done mentally berating Dawn for making amateur mistakes? He he should've seen that coming. Luckily, he had the experience to recover.

Dawn cheered for her Pokémon's Take Down, as Mamoswine reared high onto its hind-legs in order to smash the much smaller Marshtomp with club-like tusks. Rather than take the attack, or attempt to rise and strike first Brock ordered his Pokémon to defend itself with Protect. The monumental blow crashed down on the field of defensive energy, but it did not break through to Marshtomp. More importantly, in rearing up before the ground/water type, Dawn's Pokémon had made a huge target of itself to Kakuna's String Shot.

Rather than rear back for a second attack, Mamoswine slumped awkwardly off of Marshtomp's protective bubble, and onto its side, fore-legs bundled tightly to its bulky abdomen by sticky thread, rendering the enormous Pokémon useless as a physical wall.

To his credit, Max made the best he could of what followed. Magic Leaf broke through Marshtomp's Protect and did every bit of damage Brock expected it to. With Marshtomp KO'd, Brock was out of the fight, but Bugsy quickly evened the odds by swapping back to Scyther and sending him after the two ailing Pokémon with alacrity.

Brock was curious at first as to why Bugsy had chosen to attack Mamoswine first, being that Ralts was the easier KO, but it all became clear rather quickly, as Mamoswine's struggling lessened more and more beneath repeated attacks, and Ralts could do nothing of use. This way, Bugsy could eliminate the bigger threat, then quickly finish off Ralts before Dawn had a chance to save him again, without risking Onix, unprepared. Dawn's Pokémon did eventually break free, but it was too little too late. Scyther's form blurred into a whirlwind of slashing and cutting as he finished the ice/ground Pokémon off with yet another Vacuum Wave attack.

Max, like Ralts, could offer nothing, as Scyther screamed toward them, claw once more held high. With no more energy left to teleport away, Ralts went down hard. Brock could tell that it weighed heavily on Max to have to withdraw Ralts from the fight and even more so to see his partner put down so easily but, as before, the young trainer kept a stiff upper lip.

Still, this put him mostly in the same situation he'd been in before. Dawn was down to one final Pokémon, and though Max had only lost one, he still only had a single Pokémon remaining. Everything was tied up 2-2. Dawn and Max did have a distinct advantage in that they could put two Pokémon onto the field at once, but Bugsy's Scyther was still as big of a force to be reckoned with as the days previous, and he would likely use Kakuna to great effect as well. In fact, the studious Gym Leader had already swapped back out to the Cocoon Pokémon, and ordered up a succession of Harden maneuvers to prepare for the challenge ahead.

What would clench it, Brock decided, was whether or not Max could any progress with Onix. If he could get the gargantuan rock-type to fight all-out for him, Bugsy probably didn't stand much of a chance. Conversely, if he could not, then he didn't believe that it would make much difference what Dawn brought to bear.

Dawn sent out her Togekiss, which was a sound choice. Solid attacking option, and a good type match-up for the battle at hand. Max, with a frown, sent out his Onix. With the glare of contempt Onix instantly laid upon the young trainer, once he was out of the Heavy Ball Max had caught him in, Brock could tell that things did not bode well. Still, Max did not look discouraged. He turned to Dawn. "I'm ready now."

Dawn gave him a thumbs up, and together, the two of them set to work, each sidling as far to their respective edges of the battle-box as they could get. Brock assumed that this would be to better coordinate some form of obtuse attack, but if that was the case, it was a very obtuse one, because Brock sure couldn't figure it out.

Dawn sent her Togekiss up to perch on Onix's head, for some reason he didn't yet understand. Dawn was an expert at coordinating two attacks at once, after all, but Brock was sure that there wouldn't be much forthcoming from Onix. The rock-snake seemed to tolerate Togekiss taking up roost on its dorsal spine, but that seemed to be more in an effort to spite Max by ignoring the match entirely, than true acceptance.

Just as Brock expected, just as Bugsy had done several times already, over the past week, he ordered Kakuna to systematically lock Onix down. String Shot, after String Shot, all aimed at various sections of Onix's body, kept him locked to the floor, and stubbornly, the rock type refused to do anything at all about it.

Yet Dawn did not send out Togekiss to attack, and strangely, neither did Max protest. Brock couldn't tell what this was all about. Max had to know that Bugsy was setting him up for defeat. Was his plan for Dawn to stay out of this final conflict? Max didn't seem like the type to intentionally punish his Pokémon for disobedience by letting him lose without trying to help, but that was what it looked like from his eyes. Brock frowned, wondering what Max had really taken away from their discussion. Sometimes he didn't understand what went on in that boy's head.

"I don't want us to fight with each other anymore!" Max hollered, suddenly, face reddening.

It had been hard for him to really say what was on his mind, to Dawn, and it was just as hard to say it to Onix, for some reason. Like Dawn, who was so much more sociable and outgoing, he and Onix were also very different. Physically, the Rock type was just so much bigger and stronger than he could ever be. They were both so much harder for him to wrap his mind around than say, Ralts or Brock. Ralts understood him implicitly, it felt like, and Brock at least tried. In truth, he had at first wondered what he could really ever hope to offer either of them, that they might want. But it was sort of obvious when you really thought about it. It was something that everybody wanted, deep down in their heart, right?

He was repeating himself, he knew, for these were the exact same words he'd said to Dawn. They were just as true now as they had been a half-hour ago, however, and so he just kept shouting them up to Onix. "I just want us to get along and be friends with each other! I was worried at first but I want us to work together, now! I don't care if we don't win, or we're not the absolute best! If we just keep trying, I feel like we could get there! I know we could do anything, so long as we help one another! I'm asking you to battle alongside me! As my friend!"

Onix locked eyes with him, as he spoke, as if hearing him for the first time. Brock's smile returned to him, as he watched the youngster pour his heart out for his Pokémon. He'd always traveled with trainers who had very open and caring views when it came to Pokémon, so sometimes it was easy for him to take this sort of thing for granted. Every so often, though, one of them would still do something so heart-warming and so selfless that it took him by surprise. Ostensibly Max was very different from Ash in a lot of ways, but in some ways, they were very similar. Their approach to training was wildly different, but their feelings on the matter seemed identical.

Brock supposed that it was because he'd been so moved by Max's words that Onix's demurring caught him by surprise. Max, face still flushed, lowered his head in shame. Onix turned away from him, still obviously disinterested.

The worst part was that Max felt like he couldn't rightly stand there and blame his Pokémon for it. How could he expect Onix to put trust into someone who'd done nothing but embarrass him from the start? He slid his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.

Dawn bit her lip, but what she really wanted to do was bite off some scathing words at Onix. It wasn't fair! It might've been hard for Onix to believe, but she was sure Max had meant everything he'd said! More importantly, she believed those words, and intended to do her best to make them come true on her end—so If she let Onix fail Max, it would be the same as failing Max herself, wouldn't it? If her partner's end of the plan did not seem to work, then hers would have to be twice as effective. She couldn't let Max be defeated a third time.

"Winning isn't something you just deserve right off the bat!" She yelled, trying her best to ignore Max's gasp. She didn't figure Max would want her scolding his Pokémon in his place, if at all, but sometimes you just had to put your foot down. "If you're mad because you lost, then you don't have anybody but yourself to blame!"

She scowled right back at Onix when he curled around to face her. It took some effort, since Kakuna had nearly fully pinned him down, but she did not look away from those huge, intense eyes. She was not scared, as she had been in Union Cave, and she wouldn't back down, as much for Max's sake as her own. "If you think you're strong, then prove you're strong. If you think you deserve better, then you can start by winning this match."

She took a step backwards as Onix let out a plaintive groan so loud it took her breath away. It seemed like it would be a roar of defiance, but it sounded somehow different. She too was left without words as Onix spun away from her, but her silence was more a contemplative one. Huge, stony-faced Pokémon were a lot harder to understand than the smaller, more expressive ones that she and Max were familiar with.

Max, beside her, sighed. "I don't know what else to do…"

He didn't, but she did. She grabbed his sleeve, and tugged hard on it. "Max, he wants to fight! He just doesn't think he can! Kakuna has him pinned down with String Shot, just like before!"

Max blinked. "...But that's why we have Togekiss—"

Dawn nodded. "Right, so let's do it!"

"Togekiss, now!" Dawn shrieked, and the Miracle Pokémon chirped out its acknowledgement. A glimmer around Togekiss, which hadn't even seemed relevant to Brock some seconds ago, only came to his attention once it suddenly vanished. Like particulate glass from a burst vase, fragments of hardened silk shot away in all directions, abruptly sundered by interior force pushing outward. A faint, greenish afterglow lingered along Onix's stony body, an after effect of Togekiss' Safeguard.

"You can do it, Onix!" the two younger trainers shouted in unison, Dawn throwing her hands high, and Max stamping both feet.

Kakuna had hardened over to a great extent, but he was no match for the lumbering giant. Onix sprang forth, and crashed into the bug-type like a streaking comet, pounding it unto the dirt with all the unbound frustration suffered defeats. The bug-type had fainted before Bugsy even realized Onix was free. Onix, unbound, only continued to bounce around the field like a collection of stones across the surface of a pond all coordinated in a row, and scaled up fifty times. Though the ride seemed to jar Togekiss a bit, Dawn's Pokémon chirped with excitement.

Knowing better than to send Scyther out into that mess, but bound as a Gym Leader to fight the match to its fullest, he sent out his final Pokémon yet again. Scyther strafed and dodged and did manage to get a few licks in, serving his master valiantly, but in the end the bug-type just could not compete with the sheer bulk and energy of Max's much larger, and much more incensed Onix. A third and final glancing blow sent it skittering to the side, where it collapsed in exhaustion.

As all the remaining combatants withdrew their Pokémon, Brock gave his partner a sidelong nod. The Leaders hadn't won today, but losing with grace was probably the most important skill a Gym Leader could have in their repertoire. Bugsy had that skill, it seemed, as the purple-haired boy acknowledged his opponents with a smile and a nod, congratulating their good performance, rather than lamenting his defeat. Brock did the same, of course.

He crossed the field to Dawn, once the two challengers had taken a moment to celebrate and revel in their victory. He gave her a pat on the shoulder. "That was a really nice thing you did for Max."

Dawn's smile widened. "What are friends for?"

Brock laughed, and ushered her out into the lobby, leaving Max to hack it out with Bugsy.

"I feel as though you have some expertise with Pokémon that I must lack." Bugsy commented, as he approached Max. "I don't think I could have come up with a way to defeat someone at what was essentially a two-Pokémon handicap."

Max quirked his brow, after putting the Heavy Ball back onto his hip. "What do you mean?"

"I was almost certain that you'd need to expand your team in order to defeat me. Include a fire or flying type, perhaps. At the very least get your Onix to obey you. I'm not sure I'd have been able to win, in your position."

Max rolled his head about. In a way, he'd managed to do just that. With Quilava and Togekiss, the odds had balanced more in his favor, and eventually Onix had come around, in one capacity or another. "I'm not sure that I'd have pulled it out without Dawn's help."

Bugsy conceded that, with a fond and faraway look that irked Max a little. He tried to overlook it, though. "Still, that's part of it. Training Pokémon is as much about friendship and team-work as anything else. With people or Pokémon, it makes no difference. That you could get both Brock and Dawn to step to the plate for you, says a lot about their faith in you and that, in turn, says a lot about your skills as a trainer. Brock is a very seasoned Gym Leader, however he might appear, so I believe he knows true talent when he sees it. I'd like to believe I do, as well."

Max was quite taken aback like that, actually. "Th-Thanks."

Bugsy nodded. "Just remember: A trainer is comprised of all the forces he is capable of bringing to bear. A trainer who has many allies, will almost always win out over one who has only a few, however potent they might be."

Max was a very observant youth, so he saw the criticism within the complement. Bugsy could've been commenting on the helpfulness of his friends, just as easily as his relatively small team of Pokémon. He couldn't rightly argue against either, since today had surely proven both to be true. "I'll keep that in mind. I'm still not exactly sure what I should do about Onix. He might've taken this fight, but I don't feel like I've won him over entirely, yet."

Bugsy gave him another nod, before withdrawing a red and black badge from his breast-pocket. "All you have do is keep winning, Max. Everybody respects a winner. Not just people, but Pokémon too." He flicked the badge at Max, who caught and inspected it. "Because a badge is more than just a piece of metal. Even a wild Pokémon knows to respect a trainer with a lot of them, because they signify more than just places visited. That, along with your Zephyr badge, will show your Pokémon that you are worthy to command them."

Max looked at the badge, turning it slightly in his fingers so that it caught the overhead lighting. He frowned. "What if it doesn't?"

Bugsy smiled and shrugged, hands splayed wide. "You can't always please everyone, Max. That's just a fact of life." The Gym Leader watched Max swallow apprehensively, so he added a reassuring addendum. "Still, I think everyone can see that you're trying."

Max nodded slowly, his gaze sinking awkwardly as he ran out of things to say.

Bugsy, naturally, filled in the blank spot. "Oh, yeah! Dawn mentioned that you've been using a lot of Technical Machines. I have one here you might be interested in." The bug trainer patted his pockets, smiling pleasantly as Max's expression lit up. He handed the other boy the disk once he'd fished out. "TM89, U-Turn. It's a bug-type move that lets your Pokémon attack, then switch with the next Pokémon in your party. Isn't that great?"

It really was. Max positively beamed. "I-I really appreciate it!" The two young trainers shook hands, then, before Bugsy showed him to the door, stepping outside to bid farewell to the entire party of travelers. They came upon Brock and Dawn waiting for them.

Brock strode back up a few steps as though he'd forgotten something. He came to stand before Max and held his hand out, plopping a Boulder Badge into Max's awaiting fingers. "Here you go, buddy. It's not a Johto Badge, but you earned it all the same. I had to dig pretty deep into my bag to find that. I haven't given any out in a while," he chuckled.

Max didn't think that was very fair, though. He didn't see any reason why he should get all the reward for only doing half the work. Stammering, he turned to Dawn and held out the badge to her in kind. "I-I think she should have it instead."

Dawn turned to look at the Gym Leader questioningly, and Brock turned the corners of his mouth downward in honest appraisal. He supposed that was equitable enough. Dawn did deserve something to commemorate the occasion, and it wasn't as though the badge did Max any more good in his present course than it did her. "I think that's a great idea, Max."

Brock felt like his face would split in an ear to ear grin. This was the life. Watching over two younger trainers who were stumbling all over themselves to do nice things for one another was SO much better than having to separate squabbling children and keep them from hitting each other or addressing one another by foul names, such as had been his primary role with Ash and Misty. Karma did exist, after all.

Dawn took the badge with a smile and a slight blush, and descended the steps along with Brock, who marched away, feeling that all was right with the world. Max let out a satisfied huff, and then turned to Bugsy once more.

"Congratulations again on your victory. Continue to learn more as you grow on your journey. I will continue my studies as well. There's always something exciting to learn about bug Pokémon" Bugsy opined.

"I will. I hope we can battle again, someday; maybe one-on-one, next time." Max affirmed, shaking the offered hand.

Bugsy smiled warmly, glancing down the stairs. "Sure. Not that I would mind if you brought Dawn along. She's a remarkable girl."

Max felt his lips screw tight as he held on to exasperated sigh. He felt like he was warming up to Bugsy, so he didn't want to ruin it now.

"Do you think I should offer her a Hive Badge, as well? Technically she defeated me, too." He took the first uncertain step, and that was when it all fell apart for Max. He hadn't thought that he was really jealous of Bugsy's advances, until that moment, when the gym-leaders hanging question threatened to somehow…_cheapen_ the gesture he'd made. In his head, he knew that was a stupid way to feel, but his heart screamed for action.

Still, if Karma was a real thing, he was pretty sure he was about to _ruin _his for the day.

Another benefit to saying so little, was not only did people take more exception to the things you said, but they also took them far more seriously, since it was assumed that you wouldn't speak out unless the situation demanded it. It wasn't a skill he was particularly proud of using in such away, but that was just the way things went, in matters such as these. All was fair in love and war, right?

"Holy crap, is that an Escavalier!?" Max barked, slamming himself against the railing of the steps, and jabbing his finger off toward the hedge that extended from the Gymnasium to the faraway tree line.

Bugsy spun so fast you'd have thought someone had lit a fire on the seat of his pants, and hooked a watering-can to his zipper. "Where?!" he gasped

"It just bailed into the bushes, C'mon, or we're gonna lose it!" he hollered, as he mounted the balustrade, and leapt off. Like the infallible workings of a machine, just seconds after he plunged into the hedge, so too did Bugsy.

The leaves were very dense, so he assumed that since he could not see Bugsy from just the few feet away that he was, that neither could the gym leader see him. He thrashed about in the brush, for the sake of the farce. "I'm stuck! Just go on ahead without me! I'll catch up!"

He felt a little guilty when Bugsy did just that, but not nearly enough to keep him from stepping neatly out of the ground-cover, and extracting a broken twig from beneath his backpack strap. He took up a slight jog to catch up with his friends, after a step or two prompted him to pick a burr off his sock, before continuing. None the worse for the wear, he casually fell in to stride behind Brock and Dawn, just in time to catch the trailing end of a conversation.

"—You and Bugsy really seemed to hit it off, Dawn. Any potential romance in your future?" Brock teased.

Behind them, still unnoticed, Max's stride became protracted and rigid.

Dawn's cheeks turned pink, but she scoffed. "Brock, knock it off, he was just very flattering is all. Sometimes a girl likes to be told nice things about herself. Is that so wrong?" she crossed her arms. "Besides, nerdy guys are _so_ not my type."

Exasperated, Max face-faulted into the dust, hand theatrically clasping his heart. "Ugh!"

This managed to garner him some attention, though by the time they looked back, he was already dusting himself off.

"Are you alright?" Dawn asked.

"I just tripped is all," Max said in a rush.

Brock arched a brow. "Are you sure? You—"

"Yup! On to Goldenrod!" Max chirped, before snatching up Ralts and racing out ahead before anyone could protest.

"Oh, hey, Max, your sister called!" Brock yelled after his eager companion.

"I'll call her later!" he yelled over his shoulder, too embarrassed to turn around.

Today had been a weird day, he decided.

* * *

He'd left the stick buried in her guts. There was simply no way he could take it out. Even when he'd angrily wrenched it around in order to hurt her, it had barely budged.

He'd also been unable to lift her, being that she probably tipped the scales toward two hundred and fifty kilos. He'd thought maybe he might use one of her Pokémon to help him move her, but her own poke balls and belt had been no better off than his. They probably would've simply turned on him, anyways, so he didn't see much of missed opportunity where that was concerned.

In the end, it had come down to the prosthesis. Replacing the shattered robotic limb had been a simple, tool-less process, presumably so that she could do it on her own, if the situation so called for it. Obviously, she couldn't, but even his total lack of mechanical sense had worked in a pinch. He'd been very, very careful about attaching it. His expectation has been that she would immediately grab for him, the moment it was fully connected. Even if her body was next to dead, he'd seen what that mechanized claw could do, and he had no desire to see it repeated upon him directly.

He'd leapt away sprightly, after clamping down the retaining lever, and given her much distance since. He'd even pried a sharp bit of broken casing from her old prosthetic beforehand, and clasped it like a knife, should it come to such a thing. She hadn't come after him , though, but only groped her way forward.

It hadn't gotten her on her feet, but she'd managed a sort of strange crawl thereafter. In all honesty, rather than make her piteous, it simply made her more horrifying, like some undead creature in a horror movie, suffering from necrotic wounds that still impaired it.

The trip back to the ship took all night, and truly, it had been the stuff of nightmares. It was a constant, and frightening process to hear her lurching and wheezing through the brush, sometimes coming closer, sometimes becoming more distant, as he tried to keep near to her, yet stay out of her sight.

He'd feared once that she was making a run on him, and that he would only see just that blackened form, slithering through the ground-cover to catch him by his legs and bear him down to the ground where she would kill and consume him in suitably bloody fashion. Thought he'd discovered, after nearly a solid minute of the hardest running of his life, that he'd been fleeing from a spooked Sentret, it was hard to regain his breath, thereafter.

Eventually, they had made it back to the ship. He'd thought, or perhaps hoped, that she would simply die of exposure, obviously on-setting infection, or simple exhaustion before they made it back, but she lingered on, crawling forward inexorably, like an angry spirit that refused to go away.

He'd assumed they would be hoping for a perimeter sentry to call for help, so it seemed strange when J altogether avoided them, steering well clear of any sign of picketing. In fact, she made a straight shot for the secret entrance from which he'd emerged. He'd made it up the side of the hull before her, climbing purchases that were too high for her to reach, and too steep for her to balance upon, or so he thought.

With one arm, she shouldn't have been able to climb, yet still, she somehow managed to. The arm itself made handholds where there were none, biting in like pitons. When she withdrew it, she simply balanced herself with the jagged metal point of the plate in her face, which filled K with renewed unease, as it appeared she was dragging herself up with her teeth from his vantage.

Like he had, she keyed up the door, by bashing the remote loose from her arm, and grinding it against the hull, since that was simply the only way she could manage it. He hadn't the courage, or honestly the desire to help her. He felt as though he'd done his part.

When they finally made it back inside her state-room, she'd dragged herself into a chair, rather than bed. Wisely, he kept to the opposite end of the stateroom, knowing that so long as he kept his distance, he made the calls. He had tried to press her to give him what he wanted, since he'd been instrumental in her return to the ship, but stubbornly, she'd demanded her own needs fulfilled first.

"Engine…" she rasped, having to visibly arch her back to draw in enough air to get the word out. With a look of frustration, she'd tried again with a great heave, making K think she was trying to fill a collapsed lung. "Engineer," she managed, finally, before descending into a fit of dry, empty coughing.

In another place and time, K might've once thought it humorous that in the days of high-seas privateering, a pirate vessel's carpenter had also often been the ship surgeon. It was fitting, perhaps, and likely of the utmost utility to J, presently, that their engineer, also filled that role.

He'd tried to refuse at first, demand that he be given what he wanted first, but she hadn't budged. He still would not have conceded, had it not began to seem like she would die, if he didn't get her some attention. She lapsed into unconsciousness there in her seat, and though he dared not approach, for fear it was a trick, he did move to the PA console near the door. He knew that he would likely have no success appealing to the engineer directly, because he knew the man had no more respect or liking of him that anyone else on this ship, which was to say that he probably would've found K beneath contempt. Luckily, he didn't have to do any such thing.

With the press of a button, a silent alarm would come on in the engineering department, one that would summon the chief engineer straight to the captain's stateroom. He pressed it, and shortly received a winking acknowledgement. K didn't know exactly what would happen, and he honestly didn't care, so long as it ended with him getting what he wanted, and never seeing these people again.

He adjusted his sleeve, so that he could brandish the sharp metal fragment outside of anyone's notice. He tightened his body to strike, when the door access indicator chimed, and should he need to fight, he would do so. But, quite in spite of him, the door slid open, and in came the Chief Engineer, clasping a heavy leather attaché, and barely paying him any mind at all.

He stood aside and let the tall, dark-skinned Hoenni cross the room, toward the captain. He entered with a familiarity that disconcerted K a bit. He wondered how well the engineer and J got on, if J truly got on with anyone. When he turned the chair she was seated in, the man whistled.

He laid his attaché on the table nearby, and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He didn't comment, beyond the look on his face, which said he expected a lengthy and unenjoyable task head. He pointed to the bed. "Help me," he commanded, taking up the mechanical arm with both hands.

He wanted to refuse. He wanted to go over and shove his makeshift knife against the man's neck, and demand that he do the job well enough to suffice, as quickly as he could, with what effort he could manage on his own, and leave him the fuck out of it, until he could complete his business here, but he knew that if J didn't make it, he would be right back in the same boat he'd started in, and this time with no hope of getting his Pokémon back.

He couldn't allow that, so he did as he was told. They put her on the cot, and following that, he was dismissed. He didn't allow himself to be put out of the room, but he stood well away. The engineer turned surgeon began by laying out his tools, which was disturbing in its own way; to see surgical implements alongside mechanical ones, certainly. Next, and more discomforting, he began prepping his patient.

Nude, and rolled onto her side so that a good portion of her mechanical parts were obscured from sight, she seemed almost human again. Also, she seemed frail and small, somehow. Not simply in the way of some atrophied corpse, which was how he typically thought of her, but he realized, now seeing her totally exposed, that she had never been an especially large woman, though she'd always seemed imposing. A part of him wondered just how old J actually was.

He looked away from her naked, crippled body, though, finding it repulsive.

The crewman set to his task, after feeding a length of tubing attached to a small, portable regulator, up her nose with the sort of clinical detachment only a trauma specialist could know. He had to adjust the broken cartilage he'd smashed out of place, before it would slide down her throat just right. The machine began contracting an expanding a small internal bellow within a glass cylinder, and the engineer began cutting.

He did most of it from behind her back, outside of his sight, but from the first slice, he could tell just how gruesome the work that was actually going on had to be. Normally, this would've all been done robotically, as it was in most nursing centers now. Automated medical care was something of an overlooked modern convenience to some, since Pokémon Centers were everywhere and most medical procedures could be performed in the blink of an eye, especially where Pokémon were concerned. Still, when you were out in the sticks, and operated well outside of the law, this seemed to be the way things were done.

The worst part of it all, was that J's eyes flew wide when the scalpel bit into her, and caught him in their pale gray focus like search beacon. Fully awakened, and fully wracked by pain, her face became more and more twisted and labored the longer her dug into her, but she projected it all at him with those eyes. The engineer lifted a probe from the table, excision all but finished, and when he inserted it into her abdomen, she jumped, flopping hard on the bed, but she did not make a sound, and she did not look away.

Eventually, it was him who had to avert his gaze and when he did he felt like he'd just been defeated, shamed by some silent code of aggression between two territorial Pokémon, one much more severe than the other, though weak and wounded. He wanted to look back, to prove that he wouldn't be cowed, and that he would get what was coming to him. It was stupid to let himself be stared down by someone helpless, but he couldn't force himself to look back up from the floor.

He wasn't able to reaffirm his courage until she finally let out a gasp of pain. He snapped his eyes up and then promptly wished he hadn't. A thick, sucking noise seemed to echo in the room as he was finally able to remove the thick branch from her gut. He'd wondered why it hadn't wanted to come out before, and now he knew why. It wasn't a straight segment of tree-branch at all, but a forked one that must have been stabbing upward into her chest-cavity, as well as through her stomach. For just a split second, before muscular action closed it off, he realized that he was looking right through her, to the rumpled, spattered bed sheets behind.

He felt his stomach lurch, and he brought his wrist to his mouth, again struggling to keep down vomit. He swallowed the saliva that pooled under his tongue, and clamped his eyes shut. Even though he couldn't see her, and he'd turned sharply away, he still heard that half-hearted gurgle, that airy wisp of a sound that was her laughter. Through blood and bile and broken bones, she was laughing at him.

He coughed and he gagged, and tried to hold himself upright, but eventually, his nausea forced him to sit down in the chair they'd pulled her from. Not knowing what else to do, truly having no other options, no other release, his anxiety and disgust and hatred for her escaped in the only way he could. He didn't dare let himself be heard, but he sat with his face in his hands and he cried.

The surgery seemed to go on forever, and though he was too scared to fall asleep, feeling J's eyes on him, it felt like he'd lost a long track of time once he looked up again. His face hurt from where he'd rested it on the balls of his hands, and he felt deeply fatigued.

J was sitting upright in bed then, and in spite of the paranoid feeling he'd felt of her watching him, she sat facing away. A long, extensively stitched wound ran from her shoulder blade to her hip, and she sat with her leg extended, propped by a folding chair. Another mechanical prosthetic, the engineer seemed hard at work repairing it with socket-spanner pausing occasionally to check at points with an ohmmeter. When J turned slightly at the engineer's request, he could see that she'd had a patch of artificial skin laid over the flayed skin of her facial wound. The seam was noticeable, but it did make her much more tolerable to look in the face. Not that he cared to.

He tried to get himself pulled back together, to drum up some of the same courage he'd had when this had all gotten started. He tried to get his hands wrapped back around hope. He puffed out his cheeks and let out a few long breaths. If he didn't force a compromise now, than this would never pan out the way he wanted it.

He got to his feet, but it was just a moment or so after she did. Naked as the day she was born, she walked right past him. She didn't even reach out for him, as he nearly stumbled trying to stay out of reach. She went to her locker, fetched forth her spare attire, and slid it on. Her movements were slow, laborious, and clearly the best she could manage, but she dressed herself all the same. When she had done it, she'd seemed to gain back the stature she'd lost, at least visibly. She seemed once more the captain of the ship, and no more the mess of a human and machine she'd looked to him before.

He felt his moment slipping away and he willed himself to get up and to confront her before she somehow regained all her strength, but she stalked past him again, frightening him into silence.

She went to the shipboard communication system built into the wall, and switched it on. "Bridge," she called simply. She waited a few moments, but there was no response. She checked an angry breath, and tried again. "Bridge, respond."

The view-screen clicked on, abruptly, and she was greeted by a face that K recognized as the Warfare Officer, a man who seemed to have consolidated power a bit more, in J's absence. J, if she was perturbed, didn't show it. She simply addressed the warfare officer thus; "Get the ship airborne and get us off of the mainland."

The helmsman only smiled smugly, though, and J seemed to get the picture, then.

"You've got some nerve showing that hideous face of yours on my ship, J." the warfare officer balked, raising both eyebrows. The man puffed out his chest authoritatively, but she didn't bother watching the display. She knew well enough that he was posturing, without having to take it in. She looked past him, toward the bridge crew, their eyes all pointed toward the camera and started searching for something, while the helmsman rambled on. Something she could always count on. When she found it, she spoke overtop him. "And you'll no longer be giving order—"

"You. At the navigation panel."

The Warfare Officer seemed confused when she'd interrupted him. He'd expected a contest of wills and ego, but not to be ignored. The indignity seemed to chafe him. He snarled.

She just went right on ignoring him. To acknowledge him at all would be tantamount to admitting that she felt threatened for control, and she certainly did not. "What's your name?" she queried of the man conning the system, instead.

The Warfare officer spun to put a withering glance on him, which the navigator seemed to care not at all about. "Deck Crewman Yuri Karnov."

"I AM THE CAPTAIN OF THIS SHIP!" the warfare officer yowled, trying to cut the conversation short.

She did not abide by nor acknowledge that, however. "Karnov, you're promoted to Warfare Officer First Class. Get this ship in the air. Following that, you have standing orders to shoot your predecessor in his face, and throw him off my fucking ship. That is all."

She switched off the system, knowing that it would impress upon everyone on the bridge just how little the matter or it's inevitable resolution concerned her. It would send almost as strong an impression as what would follow. In the silence of the ship's early morning watch, they could all hear the gunshot echo from above deck. Half a minute later, the engines began to come to life.

In the cutthroat world of mercenary work, there was only one true constant. You could always count on mercenaries to take hold of a good opportunity to personally benefit, and behind every man who tried to grab for something, there were always ten more waiting to stab him in the back for their own piece of it the moment he overextended himself.

J knew that quite well, actually. She had not _always_ been the captain of this ship.

She turned from the panel and looked earnestly, for the first time, at K. She wondered just how much of him fit that scheme. She wondered if anywhere in him there were the guts required to stab her in the back with that little shiv he was carrying around. She hissed at him, her voice lapsing out of the professional overtones of command, and into the labored wheeze her beaten body required to stay standing for much longer. "You look like you have something to say to me. Can you finally manage it without puking?"

He felt his anger spike, and he sprang to his feet. "I want my Pokémon, and I want to leave!" he shouted, incensed beyond all previous caution. "You'd never have gotten back to this ship without me! You'd be dead out there in the woods, and this ship would belong to someone else! You owe me! I don't have any interest in telling anyone anything about you, so just re-allocate six new poke balls, and give them to me, then I'll go. We can call it even."

She wanted to scoff, to slap him senseless, for such impertinence, just the same as she'd wanted to choke the life out of the mutinous officer who'd aspired to seize control from her, but there was a better way, just as then. "Fine. Go back to your quarters, and collect your old clothes. Leave my equipment in the locker, and I'll meet you there in five minutes with your Pokémon. We'll discuss the terms of our new agreement with one another."

Her answer must've surprised him, because he stood there stunned for a moment. "Now," she cautioned, "before I change my mind."

He hustled out, and when the hatch sealed behind him, she tumbled into her seat, body lethargic and heavy. Most of her fractures were quick-set, and the internal hemorrhaging was all but taken care of, but the fact remained that she'd lost a great deal of blood, and feverous infection would linger for some time. Her mechanical components all seemed more or less in order, now, at least. She opened her eyes, when her Chief engineer, sanitization of his instruments complete, came and offered a handful of broad-spectrum antibiotics and an ampoule of morphine. She swept the pills into her hand and crunched them between her teeth, but refused the syringe.

"You'll need it," she said, around a mouthful of foul tasting powder.

The engineer arched his brow, clearly not understanding her reasoning and not knowing quite what to make of that. As hot blood splattered across her face, she molded it into a somewhat sympathetic expression, for his sake. She was glad he'd come so close, though. She didn't think she had enough energy to chase him around.

His scream was a high-pitched wail, long and wavering, and almost inhuman, when her claw bit into him as easily as teeth might have. Five sharp, hard, incisor-like talons sprang up from below like a bear trap. Each of them punched home between his legs, digging deep. She could feel everything heave inside him, his diaphragm pulling it all upwards and away from her grasp reflexively, but it wouldn't matter. She clenched down, and made a fist around the man's mangled groin, and gave her own great heave, ripping back, then tearing upwards in one quick, jerking motion.

The wail, the hideous shriek that no man should've been able to make continued to peal out from a face that now contorted into a hideous caricature of anguish. She cast the ripped flesh and slacks casually back into his chest, and let it play out as it would. For as long as he screamed, the vacuum in his lungs would keep all his insides from spilling out between his legs like raw meat from a broken grocery-bag, but the moment he ran out of air…

She waited, eyes calm. She didn't like the fact that she'd needed to kill him, but the fact remained that she had to. She might've reaffirmed her handhold on authority as far as her ship was concerned, but there was no margin for error.

Another, and perhaps even more universal thing she knew about the mercenary life, was that once someone saw you at a disadvantage, they would remember it, and however much loyalty they still professed to have, their view was forever changed. They would exploit you as soon as they were able, because they knew it was possible. The moment she'd had K bring the engineer into her stateroom, she'd know that she would never be able to let him leave it alive.

A half-hearted struggle distracted her for a moment, but she fended it off easily, by kicking at the hand he held his bloody hole of a crotch with, and showing his attacking hand aside. She had no real personal like or dislike of the men who worked for her but she did disdain having to kill men who were useful to her because of unavoidable consequences. He'd done his job well, and promptly. She couldn't afford to throw away officers like him at the drop of a hat.

She took the ampoule away from him, when he swung at her again, and stuck it neatly into his throat before shoving him to the floor. He tried to scramble backwards, gagging and swiping for his neck, but he was beginning to lapse into shock, and could manage neither effectively. She watched him from the chair, as he fell unconscious.

She turned away to her desk and opened the laptop. The finger print scanner didn't work at first, but a lingering red smear told her why. She reached for a towel the surgeon had been using to cleanse his tools, and used it to wipe the blood from hands and face. It functioned properly thereafter and she cued up the storage program, before producing six poke balls from a locked drawer in her desk. She set them into the six recessed cups in the transfer plate, then highlighted the Pokémon in the system labeled "Container Error". She specified the "Reallocate" command, and pressed the return key.

The buttons on all six balls pulsed red for a time, before a five-note chime on her laptop let her know that the process was complete. She gathered the six of them together, and dug a spare belt from her locker on which to assemble them. When she was finally done she walked out of her stateroom without a second glance at her murderous handiwork. It was just a mess to be cleaned, at this point; No longer a valuable asset lost. She felt the same about dead bodies as she did spilled milk.

As the hatch slid shut automatically, the engineer emptied himself of bowel, viscera and all there on the floor of her stateroom.

K was waiting for her. He'd done as she'd told him, and changed back into his striped T-shirt and khaki-shorts, but he wasn't so stupid as to assume that everything would just magically work itself out. Behind his back he clutched his makeshift-knife, ready to at least give her what she deserved, if she tried to double-cross him. He tried not to show how surprised he was when he saw the belt in her hands.

"Just hand it over, and that's that," he urged.

"And what assurances do I have that you won't run your mouth?" she asked. "Maybe I could use that little shank you're hiding to cut your tongue out, before I turn you loose."

He stood straight. "That's my insurance against you coming to find me again."

She chuckled airily at him again, and that made him mad, so he pointed threateningly. "If I ever so much as get the slightest whiff of you nearby, I'll tell Officer Jenny everything I know."

"And that would be?" she asked, mockingly.

"A lot more than you'd want the police to hear." He countered. She fell silent and seemed to seethe at that answer.

He tried again to remain calm, when she held out the belt to him. "Here, then."

He sucked in a breath. His fear got the better of him, and his pride lapsed into self-perseveration. "No. Drop it on the floor. Go back to your cabin, and stay there."

He expected her to narrow her eyes, or to level some equal threat against him, but instead, she simply leaned against the frame of the hatch, and continued to hold it out, a cold smile creeping onto her face. He knew well enough that J did not level threats, but it was obvious what another refusal, or worse, command, would earn him.

Now, it was just a question of guts. Either he had them, or he didn't. He would either take the belt from her hand and show her that he was not hers to do with as she pleased, or he would stay right where he was like the coward she thought he was. Neither option seemed safe, or smart, but he had to choose one . He would never willingly pick the latter.

He edged toward her. He saw no point in holding the knife behind his back anymore, since she seemed to know he had it, so he leveled it in front of himself, defensively. He didn't know if it would mean much, other than letting her know he meant business, but that was all he had.

Every inch forward was a flirtation with death, and every moment more that he hesitated was a second closer he came to his opportunity slipping away. He reached for it, expecting her to pull it away mockingly, or else lunge for him. Instead, she simply let it go.

He felt it slip from her fingers and slide between his, and he lurched down to catch it, reflexively. For a second, for one very brief and hopeful moment in time, he and his Pokémon were reunited.

Then, her punch struck him under the jaw like a car-crash. From the force of the metal-fisted uppercut, his head snapped back like a PEZ dispenser, and his vision flashed colors before narrowing to a pin-prick of the outside world in a field of black. The blade flew from his hand just as the belt did, and he hit the deck like a house of cards. He clawed for something to get ahold of, to drag himself up right, to bring to bear in his defense from an attack he couldn't see coming, but all he found was her, bearing down on him like a freight-train.

The first punch had broken his jaw. The second reduced his front teeth to shards. The third and the forth bludgeoned his mouth into a twisted bloody wreck. He gasped and gargled, and cried for her to stop, but she just kept hammering into him, screaming overtop of his screams, in rage and frustration.

She hit him again and again until his screams became wordless yelps of pain and fear, and more still, until he screamed no more. She kept raining down blows until all he could do was twitch involuntarily and all she could hear was the hard packing sound of flesh and bone. She hit him until she collapsed, and staggered, and all she could even feel aside from the heaving of her own breath was the sticky droplets of his blood on what little of her skin remained her own and the lingering tingle of vented fury in her heart, if she had such a thing.

She sucked in a long, desperate wheeze of air and sat upright again, astride her downed victim, eyes closed, head elevated, body trembling with the enjoyment of a visceral kill finally deserved. The sweat on her face tricked down her broken nose, and she wiped it away, leaving a gory streak across her face.

It felt real, tangible, at long last. Filling, in the way a wholesome meal was to a starving man. More importantly, it wasn't so much a waste as the others. K meant nothing to her, and served no real function, other than to serve her whim. She could replace him and kill his successor as well, when she got tired of him, if she so liked. The only regrets she had now, was that it was over, and she could not do it again.

He'd not made a very good lieutenant, after all. K had wronged her, tested her, and tried his hand against her, and those things she could not abide. Killing him, ultimately, while not unavoidable, was the correct choice. He'd seen her weak, too, in truth. That alone was reason enough.

But then, he coughed up blood and a piece of his own tongue, and took another breath through his shattered mouth, taking away her visceral satisfaction. In a moment of bling rage, she snarled, and gathered both of her fists overhead, to rain down one final massive strike that would crush his skull.

Yet, no, she decided, when she gave the matter a moment of thought, lingering at the apex of her swing. It felt _better_ this way. Maybe it wasn't the most efficient way, but she could do it however she chose. She was the captain, after all.

She wouldn't kill him. She would re-educate him, instead. She could still wring some use out of him, so long as this served to remind him just what exactly he was, and why he was here.

Instead of sledging his head in, she reached down and took him by the hair, lifting his battered face off the floor and pulling him in close. After a shake or two, his eyes opened halfway. They were swollen and purple, and the pupils beneath were asymmetric and out of focus, but she believed well enough that he was seeing her. She grinned down into his face, digging her fingertips into the sides of his head. "This is our new agreement, K; are you listening?"

Blood cascaded down his chin, but he did nod, deliriously, eyes newly clenched in pain. "Our new agreement is that there will never be any agreement between you and me."

"YOU ARE MINE!" She screamed, before she slammed his skull against the deck, rattling his brains. "EVERYTHING YOU OWN IS MINE!"

She lowered her voice to a venomous hiss, as he began to sob. "I will use you and your Pokémon however I like, until I decide to discard you at my own convenience, or destroy you for my own satisfaction. I owe you nothing. You will never have any leverage over me. You are a thing. Never confuse yourself for a person. Can you remember that?"

He didn't respond audibly, only gave a protracted wobble of his head, which she would not accept. "You should answer me. I still haven't decided not to kill you."

It obviously pained him greatly to use his mouth, bashed and disfigured as it was. When he opened it, all that came out at first was bubbles of blood and chips of busted enamel, but finally he managed a slurred "Yesh," as tears poured from his frightened, dilated eyes.

She laughed at him again, and all he could do was close his eyes, and pray that she would leave without killing him. When he felt her hands grasp him around his throat, he moaned a plaintive, helpless, and pathetic sob, a sensation of warmth let her know that she had broken him; irreparably and completely.

"If you forget," she promised coldly, "I will be here to remind you."

She climbed off of him, and left him there, withdrawing like a predator, leaving some half-eaten carcass to scavengers. He rolled to his side, covering his damaged mouth with both hands and cried in the fetal position, shorts fully saturated and beginning to turn cold. He'd been too frozen with fear and pain to realize he was pissing himself until it was already done.

* * *

"And then what happened?" Surge said, with a sour expression.

"I don't know, Sir." Melody said, honestly. "The rest of the recruits in the girl's barracks were up and out before I woke up. By the time any of them got there, it was already over, and I got there well after any of them."

Surge gave her a questioning look, as though waiting for her to provide some reasonable explanation for this. She couldn't, and so she didn't, but the look of shame on her face was as plain as anything else she might've offered.

"Ketchum!" Surge barked, making even the girl beside him jump. "You were there! What the hell happened?"

Ketchum stood rigid, though, as it had become a much practiced thing for him. Of all the recruits, he probably got chewed out the most. Surge's sudden call had hardly inspired so much as a flinch. This was a very serious matter, however, so the giant Lieutenant brought his hand crashing down on the oaken desk in his office so hard that the two D.I.s standing at the door nearly betrayed a start.

Ash had learned better than to shake his head, or shrug at a question he'd been asked. He kept his eyes front. "I don't know, sir."

"That's bullshit!" Surge hollered. "I want the truth, puke!"

"I just told it to you," Ash assured, "sir."

Surge bolted upright from his chair, and while Melody lost her footing and stumbled back a step, Ash barely even looked at him. He held on to another shout, and instead turned to the two men at the door. "Get Baily in here. Somebody's gonna give me some answers."

"Baily is in the first aid depot, sir," one of his sergeants answered.

Surge widened his eyes, as if he were hearing an obvious, and therefore incredibly useless observation. Of course that was where Baily was. That was his job. "Go _get_ him."

The other door man piped up, then. "Sir, Chief Baily is currently being _attended_ to in the first aid station."

Surge, taken aback, knit his brow. "Attended? For what?"

"Head injury, sir. It appears that there was some manner of altercation between Chief Baily and one of the recruits—"

"Who?" Surge demanded, sucking in a breath. He somehow already knew what he was going to hear, and he didn't like it.

When he heard "Recruit Johnson", just as he expected he would, he started hollering at max volume, withering Iuakea on the spot, and even managing to draw a reaction from halcyon Ketchum.

"And just exactly what was done about the situation?!" Surge bellowed, full blast.

His D.I. snapped to rigid attention. "S-sir, your orders were very clear as to what should be done, if there was any further brawling amongst or between the recruits of Echo Squad."

"Was I, sergeant!?"

"Sir, your orders were to summarily dismiss the perpetrator of any such violence. We had cause to believe that recruit Johnson directly attacked both Recruit Ketchum and Chief Baily during an exercise, with the intent to cause direct harm thereto. Given that your orders were already quite clear on the matter and that the recruit himself did not deny any of the accusations leveled against him, we exercised what we believed to be a reasonable degree of disciplinary action, by ejecting Recruit Johnson from the compound."

Surge's chest inflated, and his arms slammed akimbo. "Iuakea, Ketchum, report back to your bunks, and await further instruction from me."

The pair of recruits instantly did as they were told, and the moment they were outside, Surge laid into the two men with such a blistering and voluminous array of course language and harsh reprimands that the two of them surely felt fortunate that they'd managed to leave with their skins fully intact. It sounded more like a bomb going off than a man drilling his subordinates.

When his rage was fully spent and he had sent his men away, tails between legs, he decided to go see Baily. It turned out not to be much use, as the man was still partly concussed and could only offer him the same explanation everyone else seemed to, as he sat clutching an ice pack to his forehead.

"…I just don't know, LT." Baily said, "I remember seeing a lot of blue and white lights, but nothing much after that. When I came about, I was back here again. The last thing I remember was roughing up Ketchum a little bit, during the course of the exercise. Corporal Tucker said they'd found Johnson at the same site they found Ketchum and myself waylaid, holding one of his poke balls, so I can only assume he blindsided one or both of us. It was sloppy of me, LT, and I apologize."

Surge grunted, and shook his head. He didn't need apologies. What he needed was to get this training camp back on the rails. "Rest up. It's gonna be a rough couple of days ahead." He patted his chief officer on the shoulder, before departing.

He went outside, and strode directly to the outdoor bulletin where the daily schedules were posted. He tore them all down, and in their place, he decided he would leave a message. He pulled out his combat knife and gouged it into the cork-board, before leaving the implement plunged to the guard in the wooden uprights. He then stalked back to his office, in order to make preparations.

A short time later, once the order came to everyone that they should gather together on the green, nobody seemed to quite understand the context of the two, four-letter words that were carved into the bulletin board so well as Ash did.

"What's_ that_ supposed to mean?" Melody asked, still a little shaken up, as she fell into rank beside him.

Ash grunted. "Take a wild guess."

Ash didn't figure he knew much, but one thing was abundantly clear, as the LT strode before them all, bare-chested and face darkened with paint, beneath a well-worn boonie hat…

Surge was back, and **Hell Week** had come with him.

A surprisingly fair distance away, considering Doc's propensity for abandoning the place, the true object of Surge's misplaced ire strode through the sparse woods that bisected routes 11 and 8. He felt a little better having left behind that particular trial, but not much.

Some days, it was just hard for Doc to take the same sort of satisfaction out of life he felt like he should be. It was all well and good that he'd pulled a fast one on Ash and the rest of those jarheads, but the fact of the matter was that he still hadn't really got to have it out with the younger trainer in any way that definitively proved him the winner. Technically, perhaps, but the victory he desired was unequivocal.

Somewhere, sometime, he would need come to clash with Ash Ketchum, and utterly defeat him, to satisfy himself. He wasn't like Holiday. He couldn't draw satisfaction from knowing that he'd out-maneuvered his opponent to the point of simply rendering a stalemate in which he simply could not be defeated. To him, a draw was not the same as a win, and time and again stumping his young rival was not the same sort of victory he craved.

Yet now, in an almost unbelievable but very real way, Ash had put himself into a much higher bracket. One so high that Doc was barely even sure what the young trainer was, much less how do defeat him.

With a groan and a sigh, he rolled his cross-transceiver open, and punched in Holiday's number, as he walked casually along. He didn't expect the researcher to answer him, really. He hadn't over the course of the last few weeks, at least. Doc didn't even know where to begin with that, honestly. It wasn't like the boss had pulled him back to Orre for a fucking vacation, or some—

"Whudditiz, biyaatch?" Holiday's voice slurred at him, from the gear. The face he was seeing had to be someone else, though. A ruddy beard, frazzled hair, and if he wasn't mistaken, a piece of instant noodle stuck to his cheek, coupled with scuffed-up safety-glasses made him look ridiculous..

Doc didn't know what to say. "Bro, are you okay?"

The man on the screen set down a long cylindrical device, and a small test-tube, before he performed a sort of checking himself over. "Gn? Nm? Yeah. Why?"

"You look like shit!" Doc stated bluntly.

In the first truly Holiday like action yet, the man narrowed his eyes scornfully at the dirty and sodden face coming across to him. "You're no prince charming either, baldy."

Ignoring that, since it was more comforting than offensive, Doc asked his next question. "Where have you been? I've been trying to get in touch with you forever!"

Holiday rubbed one eye. "Workin'," he managed, before a deep yawn.

Now, more than just the sloppy demeanor, Holiday's evident fatigue appeared to him. The circles under his eyes, though they had always been a permanent fixture of Holiday's face, were now so purple they were nearly black. "When's the last time you went to sleep, dude?"

Holiday looked like he was about to snap off a snotty retort, but then paused. "…What day is it?"

"It's Friday."

"Still or again?"

"What?"

"Never mind. I 'bout could use a nap." Holiday murmured. "Anyways, whadaya want? I'm really busy."

Doc started talking several concurrent times, but then wasn't sure where to begin. So much had happened, some of it monumental, and he wasn't sure he could adequately tell it all over the phone, as it were. "It's a long story. What are you working on?"

Holiday seemed to have a mirror image of his own reaction, starting and stopping several times before likewise commenting. "It's a long story."

"Did you get any of my messages?"

"What am I, your secretary?"

Doc thought about grumbling, but he held it in. "Well, for now, I just need to get the hell out of Dodge. I'll explain it all later."

It was hard to see it for what it was, since the transceiver was actually on his arm, but Doc believed Holiday had thereafter crossed both of his arms in a supremely annoying hybrid of that "what-did-you-do-now?" look parents gave their children and the "what-do-you-expect-me-to-do-about-it?" expression one might receive from a workplace supervisor. At least, that was how Doc saw it at first. In actuality, and as Doc shortly realized, the crossing of his arms was more to keep his face from slamming against the table as he rested his head upon them. "Sure. Sure. I'll telltha boss, jussaz soonazai…"

Doc screwed his face up, and waited for some clarification, until he heard Holiday snore. Now it was his turn to cross his arms impatiently. He decided not to, once he realized how hard it was to keep the camera aligned. Instead he just shouted. "Holiday!"

The admin jumped upright at the loud noise, and glared at the transceiver. "Fuck, what?"

"Forward me to the boss, dude. I need to get back to Orre, pronto, and you're useless right now."

Rather than snipe a retort, Holiday scratched the side of his face. He apparently found the bit of noodle stuck to his face, because he plucked it off, appraised it briefly, then popped it into his mouth. "Mmm. Spaghetti."

"Holiday." Doc complained.

"Yeah, Yeah. I heard you." He let out another yawn. "I've just been so fuckin' busy, man. I'm beat."

"I feel ya, bro." He had to admit that he felt tired. Maybe not the most tired he'd ever been, but the last month had taken a lot out of him. He was gonna need several more good meals and some recoup time to get back up to fighting weight and fitness, that was sure.

"Alright, I'm putting you through, now." Holiday said in a monotone, tapping at the screen of his transceiver.

"Seeya."

"Later, bro."

When he was done, Holiday spread his hands over the workspace desk, and shored up the many tens of racked vials he'd been measuring out with an electronic pipette. Those were but a very tiny portion of the many thousands of diagnostics he'd been running over the past weeks. This wasn't his field, of course, but he found that laboratory science was more comprised of tedium and guesswork than anything else, and truthfully required very little actual know-how that he couldn't reason out by his own intuition or by glancing over the instructional information provided with the supplies and equipment. Most of the processes were as simple as measuring out the sample, adding the appropriate reactant for the test he intended, and analyzing the resultant precipitate.

It honestly was work probably better left to a lowly technician or lab scientist, but all the same, he didn't trust the fumbling hands of others, especially if he couldn't be there to supervise. Sloppy testing had almost ruined his career once, after all. Holiday was a lot of things, but sloppy wasn't one of them. Amateurs and phonies made mistakes and he just couldn't excuse that in himself. No matter how skilled an analytical scientist Kazuo might've been able to dredge up, he'd have still been introducing a level of human error to the diagnostic that Holiday just couldn't abide.

Some people might've worried that they were losing their edge going so long without getting any shut-eye, but he felt the opposite. He'd done some of his best work on the brink of exhaustion, truthfully. It was a rare time, really, where all of the whirring and rampant thoughts quieted and faded into the background, leaving behind quiet discipline and focus that could not normally be heard. He'd bang out a few more of these, before he hit the hay, he decided. He was on the verge of something big.

Kazuo found him sometime later, drooling all over the desk, and sighed through his nose. Rather than wake him, the CEO simply slid a yellow legal pad, onto which Holiday had been jotting his thoughts from beneath the research administrator's white-gloved palm. Many conflicting thoughts were written there.

"_Diagnostics thus far have consistently shown DNA patterns matching many known species of modern day Pokémon, with up to 91% accuracy per segment. Bizarrely, these numbers seem to recur for every test run, regardless of which modern genotype is test for compatibility; even when the same sample is run through genotyping tests for possible matches against two wildly different Pokémon (i.e.: Absol and Solosis) each test will return an approximately 80% match. I've triple-checked the viability of these tests, but continue to get the same result. Consequently, I must surmise that this specimen is_…"

Here the precise hand-writing degraded into angry scribbling, with many segments of paper inked out viciously. Some small segments were legible, though.

"…_Trans-species…A Hybridized…as a result of aggressive, pre-evolutionary inter… Ditto?"_ An arrow was drawn to this particular comment, with a sidebar containing the words _"Stupid idea._" Further below that was an altogether different comment, and somewhat non-sequitir in relation to the rest of the printed ideas.

"_Possible this specimen equates to the Pokémon version of the "missing link" in the evolutionary history between Homo sapiens and Homo erectus; a "missing number" in the National Dex."_

Below that, was something of a word web, breaking down the words _"Missing"_ and _"Number"_ into their derivative pieces, rearranging them in some places, whilst further disassembling them in others, until it had entirely transformed the two words, discarding the unneeded components and patching together the remainder into a single word.

Kazuo said it aloud, with an oddly precipitous feeling.

"MissingNo."

* * *

**A/N:** Took me forever, but I finally churned it out!

May and Drew was kinda cute and fun in a sly way, but I really couldn't resist doing more about Max. I really feel bad for giving Ash like, two lines, while Max get's half the damn chapter but, fuck it; Max is a beast. Ash, and the ultimate resolution of Corps training will take up most of the next chapter, as an act of contrition, I promise.

Red's back-story comes mostly from a fairly popular copypasta which I'm sure you can google up without too much effort. I consider it semi-canonical, all things considered. Also, I always thought it was funny how the dub always tried to westernize the food-stuffs that appeared on screen (referring to onigiri as doughnuts, for example) so I tried to do that with Holiday and his Spaghetti gag. Therefore, it's like a joke within a joke, you see? Yeah. I'm deep like that.

Anyways, I think that's just about all you're gonna see from me this year. It's been a pretty good one, looking back. Thanks to everyone who's given me their valuable words of encouragement and advice, and anyone at all who's had the guts to slog through this beast of a story just to make it this far. I'll catch you guys in 2013!


	20. Chapter XX

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Ash and Melody's training is drawing to a close, but where do they go from here? For Ash, the answer seems a troubling one. Are Misty's hardworking tendencies actually hurting her professionally, or are they just driving her sisters insane? Cynthia returns to Sinnoh to give a recent rival the offer of a lifetime, while Lance and Scott put their own plans into action.

A/N: I missed you, FFNet. Did you miss me? After hard-drive failure, back-to-back-to-back months of double-shift 7-day workweeks and two surgeries, I am fucking BACK!

* * *

PKMN2K10

Chapter XX

"The Course We've Decided"

Melody felt fortunate.

They'd had all the assurances in the world that the calorie bars that had been distributed into their service packs wouldn't last the whole seven day exercise. Yet here they were, six for seven, and still munching away. There was a lot to be said for the temperance and experience which true starvation gave a person, apparently. She didn't think her and Ash had really even bothered to eat until day three.

Everyone else in the corps had likely finished their bars off days ago, and now sat with stomachs growling, a new worry on their plate, while Echo kept strength up and it's focus sharp.

Still, the emergency bars tasted like she imagined a peanut-butter flavored shingle would, so it was only a_little_fortunate.

What she felt most fortunate about, was that she was working _with_Ash Ketchum, and not against him. The trials and challenges of the Corps had changed them all, little by little, it was true. Some had commented to her that Ketchum, her lone remaining squad-mate had changed most of all, yet she didn't think that was true.

She supposed that was because she was probably one of the few who knew Ash as he really was. They said cometh the hour, cometh the man, right? Nothing about him seemed different to the Ash she'd once known. An eleven-year-old boy who'd stood up when fate had called his name and his alone; singled him out in all the world for a task no other could complete. To her, it didn't seem so much that Ash had changed, as he'd again taken up a mantle she'd seen him wear so prominently.

It was figurative, of course, since nothing about what Echo squad was up to right now made him sole savior of the world, or anything, but it was all relative really. Roles in life that required acts of courage, leadership, and sacrifice—big or small—took special people to fill them and somehow, Ash seemed tailored to fit all of them.

She knew that she'd have failed most of the objectives without him, just the same as she'd been largely dependent upon him for the past few weeks. He was strong, learned, and skillful—all the things she wasn't. He'd spent most of his life on the road, out there in the wide-wide world, doing and learning, and growing since she'd seen him last, while she'd stayed on her tiny little island in the middle of the Sea of Kanto, where the whole world was reduced to a few square miles.

Yet, she loved Shamuti and everything on it. There had been a time when she hadn't, of course, having been so caught up in herself in that childish way. With Ash's visit, there had come a realization that the manners and customs of her island were her own, in a very real and sanctimonious way, and so she'd since dedicated herself to making sure they stayed in place.

Yet it had occurred to her not so long ago, that it wouldn't be but another short year before she was too old to be the shrine-maiden anymore, and so she would have to find a new way to work to preserve that; a different, more pragmatic way. She'd thought—perhaps foolishly—that the Corps was the ideal way to do that. Respond to the Civic Council's desire for greater preparedness; protecting the island meant protecting its culture, right?

The truth was, however, that Shamuti Islanders, like the Archipelago as a whole, were not a hard people. They weren't even a very courageous people, if history was any indication. They'd been absorbed into the Kantonese kingdoms of old without lifting a finger or issuing a single protest, fearing the power of the mainland. Even in modernity, they had not vied for succession or independence from their inland cousins. Orange islanders were content to simply hold onto what they had. Its people, like its politics, were mellow and antiquated.

The people of the mainland were made of sterner, more resolute stuff, it seemed—especially Ash. Ash could thrive, even in a situation such as this, because he was built for challenge. She, on the other hand, could only keep her head low and follow his lead, hoping for the best. She was not strong and neither were her Pokemon.

She watched him perk from where he'd sat, just above her on the slope, the wrapper of the half-eaten calorie bar he'd been sharing generously with Psyduck, crinkling ominously in the silence. Like a Watchog spooked from its clutched meal, Ash peered all about, eyes wide and alert.

All at once, four people and eight Pokemon crashed into the clearing, leaping from their slow and silent approaches for the final assault. Their presence here was no real surprise to Melody, in spite of abruptness.

In her pack, tossed carelessly by the campfire, was a small orange pennant—their squadron's "flag"—of which they were to capture and collect four others, before falling in for their final objective.

Since each squadron was holding only one of these at the beginning of the exercise, the only way to collect a sufficient number of these flags was to take them from someone else, so there was no doubt as to what this cadre was after.

Oscar squad converged from all sides, like water toward a drain, and if she hadn't know any better, she would've been certain they were about to lose all four of their flags, only to make their long trek back to base and begin again with a paltry single pennant...

Yet, that all sort of got back to how she felt fortunate to not be working against Ash Ketchum. He was the prime reason they'd already taken three flags on their own, after all.

"We're only two people! How are we supposed to cover as much ground? For that matter, how are we supposed to overpower any of the other groups?! We've got to take their flags away, remember?" She'd complained, many days prior.

She'd never thought of Ash as the deceptive sort, but surely all their successes so far flew in the face of that.

"The others already know that we're smaller and weaker than them. We'll be targets, early and often. If we don't use that to our advantage, then you're right, we don't have a chance," he'd assured her.

"We should hide our flag, that way even if we get caught, we won't lose anything!" she'd insisted, only to be defeated by superior knowledge.

"Many Pokemon have excellent senses. There's no way we could hide it well enough to be sure nobody would find it and take it."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" she'd harrumphed.

Now, just as then, he'd dismissed her reservations. At first, she'd dismissed the plan he'd thereafter laid out for stupidly brave, but now…

Without even moving, half of their problems disappeared in a splash of leaves. A seven foot pit, dug out by them earlier in the week with Psyduck's help—which had of course been something more like hindrance—Ash seemed to have gotten quite a bit of earth-moving done with the help of the Pokemon's Psychic, even if it was more often dumped on him, than where he wanted it.

Down it, one trainee, along with his Flaafy and Growlithe vanished with shouts and thuds, just as another two trainees were jerked high into the air by what they'd assumed to be clumps of dangling tree-moss which revealed themselves as the ghillied-up vines of Bulbasaur. The indomitable little grass-type erupted from his own pile of leaves and hoisted the two dangling trainees into the air by their legs, leaving them helpless, and their Pokemon without any direction besides panicked wailing.

One of the trainees did finally manage to rally his Pokemon for a frontal assault, as he observed the attack turned ambush from upside down, hanging above, but Tauros bulldozed from a camouflaged enclosure they'd made for him out of rushes and pine-branches. The bull-Pokemon took out the leading element of the group, a Raticate and a Bibarel with a head-on crash.

The remaining four still felt like they might've been able to take Ash and Psyduck—who was at this point, quaking up a storm, and running about in aimless panic—on, even so, until a ball of flame streaked down like a meteor, and landed in their midst. Charizard, who'd been circling above for over an hour now, snorted twin jets of fire, softening their resolve some. Only a very brave-looking Graveler stood his ground, while the rest fled.

Melody supposed that might've done the Graveler any good, had he not immediately found himself outclassed and outmatched. Charizard, huge and imposing, made short work of the rock-type, especially since Ash doled out commands for Steel Wing, and with no guidance from its own trainer, Graveler's response was too slow to make a difference.

She tried to pretend that she couldn't hear the fifth and final trainee coming up on her from behind, hoping to take the dangling orange pennant that had no doubt drawn them in first place, from the front pocket of her pack. She imagined that the look on his face must've been one of absolute glee as he pinched out the flag and turned to take off with it.

Unbeknownst to him, however, the pennant was threaded to a thin spool of wire, and so he was about to get far more than he bargained for.

Once the spool paid out it's length and snapped taught, it tugged at a cinch-knot. As the knot popped loose, a long, Y-shaped stick that had been tied down alongside her snapped straight again, green and elastic as it was. In it's crutch, a poke ball whipped free and went sailing after the flag-thief.

Honestly, this was the part of the plan she had the least faith in. It had failed to work the two times they'd tested it previously today, yet Ash had arbitrarily assured her that he'd worked the bugs out, in spite of having ostensibly done nothing to change it since.

Ash struck her as the sort of person who's creative thought was so daft that it might've passed for cunning occasionally, but an engineer he most certainly was not.

Again, just like before, the poke ball whipped hopelessly high, its point of departure from the whipping snare much too soon. In the end, it all worked out anyways, though. Somewhere in the overhead canopy, the ball had evidently collided with something solid enough to open it, and so straight down from the trees, along with several broken branches of considerable circumference, came Snorlax. The huge Pokemon, buried the poor trainee like a tremendous sack of flour.

Melody found her eyes bugging out in shock, but Ash hooted with satisfaction over her shoulder. "Told ya! I nailed it," he cried, though it was hardly that.

She rolled her eyes at him, a silent insistence that he'd just gotten lucky, but she followed him over, just the same. She plucked the pennant back out of the hand that flailed in futility to free the greater portion of the trainer trapped beneath, and gave Snorlax a thankful pat.

Ash recalled his Pokemon with a compliment and a chuckle and the trainee, who they could now see was Oscar squad from the patch on his lapel, sucked in a huge breath that he'd been unable to before.. He didn't get much of a reprieve, because Ash was on top of him in a split second, pining both arms down under his knees and stuffing his face into the dirt with a huge handful of his cover. To Melody, who stood watching him rifle through his captive's jacket pockets with a practiced ease, it looked like how she'd seen police search dangerous, subdued suspects in crime-drama television.

"Where did you learn to do that?" she asked, brow quirked.

Ash didn't bother to look up. He just shrugged a little, as he continued looking. Eventually, he produced a tightly wadded ball of orange pennants. There were four altogether; many more than what they needed, and that made him a little uneasy.

This made it a question, Ash supposed, of what they would do next. By all rights, they could and should have marched back to base, eight flags in hand. Then, he supposed, the message of who you did and did not mess with, in the Pokemon Corps at least, would be quite clear. Part of him wanted to do just that.

Still, they did only need five and he had gotten the impression of late that Melody would not have chosen that option. Maybe she wouldn't have voiced any disapproval on the matter, if he went ahead and took them all anyway, but surely she wouldn't have approved.

Still, it was pretty much a cut-throat world out here in the woods surrounding Vermillion. He didn't suppose that it would've made much difference to Oscar Squad if he and Melody had been reduced to nothing, and been forced to crawl back to base to start the whole exercise over again from a single pennant with only one remaining day left to complete it.

With a huff, he decided that it was all the same at any rate, and, tossed the three he didn't require back onto the gasping trainee, before taking a moment to inspect the name on his lapel. "Take your squad and get out of here, McCall."

He didn't feel as though he'd done a truly benevolent thing when McCall heaved himself up, and rapidly collected his flags, before beating feet out of the clearing. He didn't even particularly feel like was doing a smart thing, as he signaled for his Pokemon to allow retreat, and the remaining attackers disentangled themselves from or climbed their way out of the traps that had seized them. They gathered their Pokemon and departed without incident, at least, so there was at least that to be thankful for.

He sighed, then turned back to Melody, handing over their final token with a smile. "Aaand… that's a wrap."

* * *

Things had improved, if slowly.

Silver had never been one for lengthy displays, whatever the emotion. Still, whatever his outward disposition might've seemed, he'd barely talked at all until the next day, and even then, it had only been to tell her that he was starving.

She'd about come unglued when she realized that she hadn't made him anything to eat up until that point. She'd been so busy just hovering around until she was wanted or needed, and seeing to him quietly that she hadn't even thought to make a trip through the kitchen.

Once he'd said it, she felt her own stomach roar, audibly and it made him chuckle lightly when she looked so flabbergasted though, so she was thankful for her forgetfulness, at least in that regard.

A big meal seemed to restore him, and she supposed that it was probably for good reason. She'd never known Silver to have a dainty appetite, and she doubted that it was a simple task to get a decent, filling meal out there on the road. That begged the question: Was her son getting enough to eat? Maybe she should've fed him more while he was home. The thought had made her frown, as she had sat there, stirring.

Still, she laid out all of the things Silver liked most, rapidly and in force. Seared sirloin, charred black on the outside, red and bloody on the inside. She didn't care for it that way, but it was considered a more traditional method in Blackthorn, where Silver came from, so she did it anyways. She also made tortellini, which Silver liked because they were "thick and sortof chewy, but didn't have that weird filling like ravioli," in a vinegar dressing. Lastly, she prepared sweet-potatoes, cut into medallions and sauteed with minced onions and butter, which was one of the very first things Silver had ever asked her to make for him, specifically.

She still remembered a younger Silver standing over her shoulder, skeptical and dubious that she would be able to make the dish the same way he'd had it back home, but her efforts had done away with that sort of uncertainty a long time ago. She could cook to any taste, even the more bizarre flavors of northern Johtoh, not just her own. She'd always had a very powerful talent for this sort of thing, and she put it to great use as a homemaker and a wife.

Her mother had often told her that she should open a restaurant, before she'd passed on, but life did often hinder the best laid plans. Still, it was a talent that she was happy to exercise when it came time for it, and the personal nature of cooking for someone who was close to you seemed so much more rewarding than feeding strangers for money.. Especially once Silver started eating, and she could begin to see the joy she'd packed into every bite before him spread unbidden from his mouth to his stomach, and everywhere in between, slowly but surely wriggling its way past the sadness in his expression in small increments.

Soon, she found, she'd just sat there watching him, smiling whenever he perked or looked her way, which was becoming more and more often the closer he got to cleaning his heaped plate. Just him being here with her brought back so many memories.

Thereafter, they'd spent the evening together on the couch, holding each other for lack of better options. Deliah knew there was nothing she could really do to help him with what he was going through, and he in turn, knew that was true. Still, she felt Silver clinging to her just as hard as she was to him, desperate for anything that might make the unbearable, somehow just a little more bearable..

She remembered a time, fifteen years previous, where they'd sat together much like now, holding one another, afraid of how much worse it might be if they let go...

Several months before Deliah had been due to give birth, she'd become suddenly ill. Nobody seemed to know why, since she'd done everything right. Eaten the right foods, followed the right recommendations, taken heed of all the little dos and don'ts—she was otherwise completely healthy and strong they said—yet some unknown complication with her pregnancy had arisen, and there was nothing anyone could do.

There had been some very frightening concerns that Ash would not go full term, that he would be born dangerously and likely fatally premature. At that time, there had never been more blood curdling news, to either of them. Somehow, at least subconsciously, it had been hard for both of them not to imagine the threat as external, as something to be guarded against, even though so much advice and logic told them it was out of their hands.

For long hours, every night for the next four months following, the two of them had sat here, reclining against the arm of the couch, her back against his chest, unable to do anything aside from cradling her stomach, as if afraid to let go, but that's exactly what they'd done.

The both of them had sat with all four arms clutching desperately at something that had once been certain to bring boundless happiness which now seemed like it would flutter away if they gave it the slightest opportunity. For so, so long they sat there, tricking themselves into believing that the slightest lapse in defense would mean disaster, yet convincing themselves that so long as they remained vigilant, all would be well, even though they both knew that truthfully they could do very little but hope and they pray to Arceus that everything would be alright.

Silver, though, had often stayed that way throughout the night, even long after she had fallen asleep. She remembered he was so determined that they were wrong, almost angry that anyone would dare tell him that his son would be anything but a strong, healthy heir of his body.

Ash had come full term somehow, all on his own, which was as much an Arceus-granted miracle as anything she'd ever received. Still, a part of her, no matter how devotional, did believe that her husband had played his part in it as well; that somehow, Silver and his huge, cradling arms had convinced her and her pregnant body to become well again, and that, perhaps more than anything, had been what had saved her son from life-threatening uncertainty.

Now, more than ever, she wanted to believe that, because she wanted to believe that, even though good sense told her that nothing she could do could possibly work, if she just kept trying in the ways she knew best, they would eventually work anyways. That if she kept at it, eventually she could and would make his heart whole again, even though there didn't seem to be anything for it.

So, taking a page from Silver's own book, she'd kept on like that for almost a week now, doing the things at which she was skilled. Cooking, and comforting, with all the talents available to her, and of course, spending those many hours tucked beside him on the couch.

And, just as she'd hoped, things had improved. Progress was very slow, yes, but also very sure.

He would smile, if briefly, at the taste of something, or at something she mentioned, or a casual touch that neither of them had felt in a long time.

So, even though it made her feel a little guilty, she decided that it was time to make a little push. A push for something that just might do them both a mountain of good. Him, because it would be a reminder of just how much she really loved him, and her, well...

For six long years she'd gone without him, and she'd constrained herself when she'd found out just what sort of state he'd been in upon his return, but there just came a time when a woman needed a little satisfaction. It wasn't as though she'd never sought personal, private comfort, or anything in all this time alone, but after that long, she simply had needs that only a member of the opposite sex could fulfill. Needs, specifically, that only Silver could satisfy.

She didn't imagine herself as brazen in any sense of the word, but to be fair, she had the same hungers, the same physical desires as anyone else. She didn't see any shame in it as a whole (though it was perhaps just a little embarrassing to consider how out of practice she was, after such a long time) so as such she didn't see the sense in letting her term of abstinence go on any longer than it had to. With no need to sugar-coat it, she simply blurted it out. Not in a vulgar way, but in a straightforward and honest way, since that was how she meant it. The words still found a way to make her blush, but it was behind her usual smile.

"Will you sleep with me? I've missed you a lot."

Silver blinked, and though he often seemed a man of incredible worldliness, stern and imposing, he blushed his own small measure, in a thin pink strip that ran over the bridge of his nose. She wondered if it was a thing he often thought about out there on the road, in the same way she'd thought of him, all alone in her empty bed.

At any rate, his slightly bemused, then shaky smile told her all she needed to know. He didn't say anything, perhaps because he didn't want her to think she'd caught him off guard, or said something that had made him feel giddy. His single emphatic nod said much the opposite, though, and she was elated for it.

She bounded into the bedroom and locked the door behind her, carefully. She would prepare a bit, she decided, before the event. Special occasions usually demanded a little extra groundwork, after all, and she didn't think a good romp after a six-year intermission called for anything less than the best she could manage.

She had to dig into a deep, deep recess of her dresser drawer to find some of the accoutrement, since it had been such a long time indeed since she'd needed any of it. She found, that at this point, some of her lingerie was quite small. She had to suck in a bit to get the garter belt on.

Her body had changed, but she supposed that was to be expected. After having given birth to their son, and enjoyed some fifteen years of good living, those things were bound to happen. She looked at herself in the mirror. Perhaps not the vision of loveliness she'd been on their honeymoon; the night she'd first donned this pure-white regalia, but it made her feel attractive none the less.

With long, hip-rolling strides she slinked back into the living room. Silver had gone back to the kitchen to wash out their glasses at the sink. She cut him off at the entryway, pressing her body against the frame, and arching her back. "How do I look?" she asked sultrily.

He stopped in his tracks, but it was not with the sort of slack-jawed awe at her sexy appearance she might've envisioned. Instead, he just started laughing.

She huffed in annoyance. Silver had an irritating quality, in that the man had absolutely no filter between the things he felt, and what came out of his mouth. "I've changed a little, since I was nineteen, huh?"

His laughter grew louder, more raccous. "Yeah. You got all doughy!"

Deliah sucked in a shriek at his rudeness, refusing to give him the satisfaction of tormenting her. "Fine!" she declared, sticking her nose into the air. "If you're not impressed, then I don't see any reason why—"

Silver muffled his laughter down to a slightly less outrageous volume, and tempered his assessment a bit. "No, no. I like it. It's better this way, I think. It makes you look…sexier, somehow."

He swiped away the hands she'd brought down to embarrassedly cover herself, and covered the soft expanses of bare flesh with his own. With calm and gentle surety, he palmed her sides, sliding to grip the plumpness of her outer thighs. His touch evaporated her annoyance, and made a throaty sound issue from her mouth.

She'd been slight when they'd met; thin and pretty, and girlish. Those features had lasted for Deliah, and in ways, she was still every bit the pretty girl who'd grabbed his interest, and his heart. Her body, however, was no longer the slight, gangly vessel that had once carried her. Instead, she'd developed an aesthetically pleasing thickness, a fullness of hip and bust that no younger woman could match.

To Silver, it seemed that Deliah had all but surpassed the feminine ideal. Her body was soft and supple, buxom and curvaceous, ample in all the places that begged to be touched, and every inch of it warm and inviting. Her shapely figure was intact, but it was much fuller now, than it once had been. "The problem is you've got all this stuff covering it up."

He pinched the hooked retainer of her laced bra with this thumb, and slowly swept the straps off to either side. Her breasts fell, heavy and rotund, making him smile widely at the impressive sight of them. He eased his fingers under the clasp of her garter-belt, and popped it off, likewise.

He brushed the skin where her tanga fit too snugly, and left a tight indention in the curve of her hip. And somehow, with just a few touches and just a few words, he'd made her feel as though she could've cared little to the nothing for the lingerie that had only moments before made her feel so womanly, and alluring. She felt sexier coming free off the garment, as she slid it down to mid-thigh and let it drop free to her ankles, exposing herself completely, than she'd felt putting it on.

After so long, being alone and to herself, even just showing her body to him felt blissful. She went to peel off the stockings, excitement heightening as the garters hung limply, but he clutched her wrists. "Not those. I kinda like those. Those can stay."

Silver unbuttoned his collar, and she helped him along, with insistent tugging and a blushing smile that she felt like she'd nearly forgotten a long time ago. Whatever extra pounds she'd put on over the years didn't seem to have touched him, but she was more aroused than jealous. Just as it had been so long ago, every inch of him was bulging, corded muscle and tight, dusky skin. His face had become harder, more lined with the passing of years., but he still had the body of a man half his age.

She felt her fingers fly to her lip and pluck at it in a fluster, as she slid his belt free of it's retainers and he let his jeans fall to the floor. Silver was big all over, and he wasn't getting old there, either.

It all happened in a rush then, finally, neither of them willing to wait anymore. Whatever her intentions might've been, they didn't make it to the bedroom until a very long time later, to the tune of a broken kitchen chair, an overturned lamp on the couch end-table, and a downed picture-frame in the hallway.

Whatever else Silver might've been; unquestionably blunt and straightforward served him well in more amorous regards, as he was a very diligent and thorough lover. That, and the stamina really showed. She remembered that during their honeymoon Silver had insisted his intent to have her in so many ways she was bound to like at least one of them. The same had been true of this evening, and like then, she'd found nothing at all to complain about, and many occasions in which she'd needed vocalize her resounding approval.

The hour had become so late it was early, and yet Silver came for more, tirelessly. Unfortunately, she had to stop him this time. While he might've still been a sexual dynamo, she was flushed scarlet down to her stomach and slick with sweat. She'd been well past the point where she'd been able to catch her breath an hour ago, and was quickly approaching the point where she was pretty sure she'd lose the ability to breathe altogether if she didn't make a concerted effort at it.

He kissed her cheek, and slithered away to the edge of the bed, coyly. When she looked at him, her husband gleamed in the diagonal stripes of starlight coming through the window, gray hair pale and jagged. She smiled at his back before he straightened and strode fiercely back out of the bedroom. Unfortunately for him, he met Mimey stark naked in the living room, if the chorus of yelps and stumbling that met her ears was any indication.

She giggled into the bed, and rolled over. Let them sort it out, she decided. She basked in the heat of a warm bed, for once, and she was not about to give that up. She stretched, curling her toes into the rumpled sheets. She felt a little roughed up, truth be told, but in a sort of nice way, like that of a hard days work. Happy and now fulfilled, she let herself slip into a satisfied slumber, half covered, and one stocking crumpled around her heel.

Silver found her later, once he and Deliah's Mr Mime had sidled around one another, pretending they'd never met, and he'd taken a coffee in the kitchen, flushed and bare-chested. Buckling his belt back up, as he leaned against the door frame, Silver snorted a small laugh.

She was taking up almost all of the bed and snoring quite profusely, but he didn't have the heart to wake her. She was adorable in her own sort of way, and he didn't think it was fair to try and shoe-horn her to one side of a bed she was quite used to sleeping on however she damn well pleased. Certain things were best left alone, after all. Not that he thought she'd wake up even if he belly-flopped down beside her, with the wet circle of drool she was leaving on the pillow.

It was sortof satisfying to see her so disheveled anyways. When he took in the complete sight of her, practically turned inside out with exhaustion, he got the feeling of a job well done, and he wasn't ashamed of his pride in it.

His feeling of pleasure quickly deflated, though. Deliah had made him feel better in her own way, and he was thankful for it. He might not ever outright say so, but it was a wonderful thing she'd done. Had been doing, really, over the past week. It would never fully erase what had happened, of course. He was, an always would be a little emptied by the loss of Chikorita, but she had done as much or more than he had any right to deserve. Hell, he'd barged in out of the blue to intrude on her routine, and she'd treated him like a king!

Deliah really knew how to make a person want to stick around, but he still felt so miserable, deep down, that he couldn't hide it, not even for her sake.

Still, upset or not, there did come a time when all men must face the music, and now was certainly his time. He'd already kept Lance waiting long enough. He'd shut Lance out when everything had been happening so quickly and so many drastic things had occurred all at once for the sake of keeping face in front of him. Lance and he had been friends once, but there was no way he was going to let anyone but Deliah see him the way he had been this week.

He glanced at the wall mirror and tightened up his expression a bit, locking his features into a hard scowl. It wasn't really how he felt, but it was better than the honest truth.

His father, his father's father, and so forth had all been that way, he supposed, a legacy of very stern mountain men. Not a hugging and kissing sort of family like Deliah's. He still remembered his Pap had once given him advice as a young man:

"It's alright for the gentler sex to show their tears, Silver", pap would say. "but us men only get swearing." He'd broken that rule maybe once or twice, but at least he'd managed to hide it well. Swearing now, that was a different story...

He found himself smirking a bit. Deliah didn't much approve of swearing, but Pap's advice had served him over the years. He foresaw much course language in his near future anyways. He slipped his shirt back on over his head, and took his jacket from the hall closet before pausing to scribble a note and tack it to the refrigerator before he left.

Once he was done with Lance he would come back home. At least for a little while. He closed and locked the rear door of the house behind himself, leaving only a crumpled sheet of paper behind.

"Stepped out for a few hours. Be home soon, _Sweet pea_," it read in block letters, using his nickname for her, as was his habit for people he liked.

It was time to go see the professor, a man for which he had no nickname, just as he was sure the professor had no nickname for him, unless it was a very uncomplimentary one. Silver Ketchum and Samuel Oak had never gotten on well; the man had been Deliah's mentor for so long that he was something of a surrogate father. In that regard, he'd always been highly disapproving of Silver in all but the most openly hostile sense.

Still, as much as Silver mutually disliked the man, he was the closest thing to a Pokemon nurse in this backwater town and that had all but necessitated a visit, both earlier and now. Silver didn't particularly want to go, but if he wanted his Pokemon back, there was little other choice, and he needed Salamence to get where he was going.

He unlatched the gate, and strode boldly through the night. It didn't take long to get there, but then that was no surprise. He found himself hesitating by the door to the professor's laboratory for just a moment, then bulled through that hesitance and began pounding on the door. He was Silver Ketchum, and he wouldn't be cowed by anyone!

He sucked in a breath, once he heard someone beginning to unlatch the bolt, and stood to his full and impressive height. Once the door swung open however, Silver angled his head in confusion. Same white lab-coat, sure, but definitely not the professor. Yet, he'd seen that face before. It was definitely an Oak face. Square jawed and briskly impatient, stern browed and dark-eyed, the look was unmistakable... but where did he know that face from?

"Mr. Ketchum?!" Gary asked with a gasp.

Silver reeled. It was the professor's grandson! "Holy hell! You sure shot up!"

Gary looked down at himself, then back up with a quirked brow. "It's been a long time. It didn't really happen that fast."

Silver scratched his face, regarding the young man in a slightly different light. He might not have cared much for the professor but he did like Gary enough to have a nickname for him. Still, it didn't really seem that appropriate to call Gary "Little Man" anymore, so for what it was worth he just reached out to shake his hand. "I guess that's true," he acknowledged.

Gary smiled, somewhat more warmly than he'd felt of late. Ash's dad was definitely one of those "cool dads". He'd always been training Pokemon out in the hills in those long ago days when he'd lived in Pallet; training Pokemon that were bigger and more ferocious looking than anything he or Ash could've imagined at that time. Frequently, he and Silver's son would sneak out there to peek at him, against the warnings of both his grandfather and Ash's mom, creeping noisily through the bushes.

Silver, too amused to rat them out, would pretend not to notice, he remembered. Now that he considered it, one of the things that he had always liked about Ash's dad was that he'd never treated anyone like they were beneath him, like most adults. Granted, he did treat quite a few adults like they were somewhat less than important, but Gary couldn't rightly say that wasn't the same quality in action. Silver had always given him the sense that he didn't much care for what people seemed to think of themselves, but rather for what he saw in them. The fact that he'd always seemed to treat Gary in a manner the boy had felt befitting, pleased his sensibilities even now.

...Of course, that had all been before Ash and him had become somewhat _estranged_. The feeling of Silver's huge hand enveloping his own, so powerful and massive that it might crush his own puny grabber like a bundle of dried twigs, suddenly made him feel very uneasy. As casual as Silver was, the young researcher highly doubted the man would approve of the antagonizing Gary had given his son over the years.

But then, that was all in the past. He and Ash were on much better terms these days, and either because of that, or in spite of what had transpired before it, Silver didn't crush his hand into a useless wad of meat and bone, but simply shook it firmly, and let it go. Gary tried not to make it seem like he was snatching his fingers back from the jaws of a Cobalion when he retracted from the gesture.

Silver favored him with an arched look, but then shrugged. "Hey, is your grandpa around?"

* * *

The task was over, but DIs still thundered around, the same as ever, lending truth to the idiom "It's not over till the fat lady sings." He didn't think there was anybody left in the corps with an ounce of fat still on their bones, so Ash wasn't sure where he was going to find one of those.

He hadn't heard anything directly from the LT, of course, but they were all advised that Surge didn't want anybody thinking it was a good time to knock off and hit the sack just yet. In fact, all the drill instructors had them standing ready until such time as either the whole corps had completed the exercise with the prescribed number of pennants, or the full 168-hour time-period had elapsed.

Ash felt very worn out, and honestly, now that the pressure was off, he felt like he was starting to catch a cold. Still, he didn't require much motivation to stay on his feet, in spite of how beat up he was.

Ash honestly didn't think there was anything **more **motivating than finally leaving the Corps, and getting himself wrapped back around the idea of being a traveling trainer again. One more tedious task, and then it was all over. Life could get back to normal!

He glanced over at Melody, to see how she was taking it all, but she was still checking over her chart to deliver the final report to Surge. She drew on the laminated map with a grease pencil, illustrating the course they'd traveled over the past seven days, and circling the stand-off locations where Echo had faced engagements with other squads.

Now that he'd thought about it, he'd been pretty lucky to have her around, in that capacity. He was utter crap at navigation and he'd reached a point in life were he was fully ready to admit that. The slip-ups they'd faced throughout all his travels, with maps and shortcuts and the like hadn't been exclusively his fault, but he'd learned enough about himself to know that the percentage point was way on the high end of the scale. He might've been a big fish in a small pond here, when it came to training, but he was still a crap navigator.

Melody, on the other hand, was a seasoned sailor, whatever else she might've been, and so she had experience and skill at reading maps. A sea-chart, she said, was similar enough to a terrain map, in that they were read in the same way, just in opposite terms. She'd explained some of them in detail, but the particulars remained lost on him. The point was, he'd deferred to her on everything even remotely related, and she was quite handy with it, as promised.

He heaved out a breath as he watched her compare two positions on the map with parallel rule, divider calipers, and prismatic compass. It was really nice to have someone to directly rely upon. It made him feel a lot less like a ship being tossed in the wind, which was what he'd felt like for a while now. It made him smile, but it also made him feel a sharp pain in his gut.

He missed Pikachu so freakin' bad right now!

He thumbed the ball on his hip, and bit the inside of his lip. He could just let his best friend out of the ball right now, and be alongside him for this final task, but there was always that chance that he would be forced to put him back in there again. Before, he'd excused it by saying that he had no desire for Pikachu to suffer as he was suffering, and he supposed that in a way, that had been true. There had definitely been some genuine suffering over the course of the camp. That was just a petty excuse, though. Pikachu was just as able to handle things as he was, at any rate…

Yet, the truth of it was just as simple as that. If he eased his own heart-ache by reuniting himself with Pikachu, he would only have to stuff his friend back into that ball and he just didn't think his heart could handle that even if it was only for a very brief time-span. The pain he would feel if he had to see that dejected look on his partner's face again would push him over the edge. He took his hand off of it, and let it come to rest at his side, once more.

He wasn't sure how he'd managed to hold it all together so-far, actually. Though, he supposed all his other Pokemon had been a huge help in that regard. Just seeing them and their willingness to work together with him through the thick and thin of the Corps training was a massive boon, yet, without Pikachu, even that felt more hollow and distant than it usually did. The truth was, and really always had been, that Pikachu was the foundation of how he defined himself as a trainer. He was friends with all his Pokemon, that was true, but without Pikachu who was the most prime exemplar of this relationship he had with them, he felt like he was phoning it in.

He smiled slightly again when he looked back to Melody figuring away furiously at the map. He needed his Pika-pal the same way Melody needed those instruments, there was no doubt in his mind. Without that, he was just as lost as he would've been…well, without Melody herself.

He felt himself blush, and he had to look away from her. Melody had been on his mind a lot in the past week, and not just because she was constantly nearby.

Well, that was part of it. Ash had never thought of himself as overly interested in girls, at least not the way Brock was, always panting and sweating over the first pretty thing that came his way. Still, he was a growing boy, it seemed, and things did start to change in the springtime of a young man's life.

Or, at least that's how the professor had put it during the pre-licensing sex-ed classes he and Gary had been forced to sit through. It was funny how Professor Oak could make you understand almost anything if he was just a little poetic about it. In hindsight, though, the rather informative lymeric concerning the "Man from Nantucket" had been a little on the heavy-handed side.

Still, like clockwork, it had somehow come to pass, presenting itself rudely, and much to his embarrassment. On the third night of this exercise, a cold front had swept out onto the Bay of Vermillion and left them shivering under the thin wool blankets provided them. It was hard to get away from, with the ground so cold beneath you, which was the only reason he'd agreed to sleep alongside her in the first place, even though the arrangement had proven to be a very brief one. He supposed he hadn't really given much thought to what huddling together for warmth might've actually meant. Of course it had to mean touching each other, he just hadn't expected it to be so…so…

When, in her sleep, she'd thrown her leg over the inside of his, and he felt her thigh graze against his hip, it had taken somewhere in the vicinity of six seconds thereafter for him to realize that there wasn't a chance in hell that this was going to work. He knew that, because he'd counted. For six terribly long seconds he'd tried to muscle it away; lay there quietly and bear it without having a major freak-out. Then, nerves shot, he'd exploded from underneath the covers, and leapt straight back into his boots, every desire for warmth evaporated.

"Nope! Nope, nope, nope! No-o-ope!" he'd brayed, trying to shake himself loose of the uncomfortable feeling that had swept over him, stooping to tie his laces.

"Are you okay?" she'd asked, shocked awake or at least into no longer feigning sleep, he guessed, since her face was almost a shade of plum, even in the darkness. Obviously she had been just as embarrassed and confused by his reaction he was, but that hardly made the lump in his throat any easier to swallow, nor did it make the lump in his trousers any less conspicuous.

He had slumped a bit, in what he hoped was an inconspicuous effort to hide it. "My stomach hurts all of a sudden. J-just take my blanket if you're still cold."

And with that, he'd marched straight away to find sleep elsewhere. Eventually he'd settled into a cut just down-slope from their campsite, but even shielded from the wind it had been bitterly cold, and sleep had really been more of a still and silent contemplation of his discomforts, emotional and physical, than any period of actual rest.

His awakening, if it could so be called, was to the rather unpleasant and terrifying feeling of not being able to move his legs. Numbed by a night of exposure, he couldn't even get to his feet, and his quivering hands had barely had enough strength to open Charizard's poke ball. Fortunately, a half-hour or so with that flaming tail curled around him was enough to rejuvenate his frozen limbs, and he'd shortly collected Melody, and moved camp.

Neither had spoken much of that occasion since, both seeming to want to forget it, more than anything.

Still, there was no denying that Melody had been on his mind. She was the sole reason she was still here, after all. It went without mentioning that she was his sole remaining human ally, and that was only if you considered those who'd once been in Echo alongside them allies. Frankly, he considered it a loose term at best.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Melody called, just as he began to shift his pack and turn aside, catching him motionless.

"I guess so," he shrugged, fully shouldering the bag, and reminding himself that Melody could not read minds..

The question had been bugging Melody like a bad itch, and since the pressure was off for the most part, now seemed as good a time as any to ask it. "What really happened last week?"

Ash tried not to seem unpleasantly surprised by the query. He honestly didn't know a whole lot more than he'd let on, and though he didn't really have any answers that satisfied him, much less ones that would satisfy someone else. "I don't know what you mean."

Melody huffed. "Ash, you don't need to lie to me." She couldn't really imagine what it was that he would need to lie about, truth be told. Based on what little she'd gleaned about it, the matter hardly seemed resolved, much less adequately explained.

He rounded on her angrily. He'd come to realize that he was a lot of things lately, but he wasn't about to let anyone call him a liar. He stopped himself short of yelling, though. That would've been foolish, not to mention making him look like a jerk. Instead, he crossed his arms. "What do you think I have to hide?"

Melody shrank away a little from his obvious ire, but eventually she felt her spine straighten. "Well, for one, some of the DIs who got there before the rest of us said something about Doc telling you that "you owed him one," or something like that."

Ash shook his head. "I told you before, I was confused. I had no idea that any of it was an exercise at first."

"Well, It seemed pretty obvious to me when all the instructors held us back to form rank instead of calling for a general pursuit—"

Ash seemed to grow a foot or more as his anger grew, neither of them was particularly tall, yet still Ash tried to tower over her, knife-hand thrust defiantly into her collar, as if in accusation. "I was gone long before that! Unlike you, I actually know what it's like to have your Pokemon taken away! It's not a joke or a game! I would've done anything to get Pikachu back—"

With ire of her own, she slapped his hand and pointed her own set of five fingers straight into his face, backing him away. "So what exactly did you DO, Ash?! That's all I want to know! It's not like I'm going to fucking rat you out! I'm your friend aren't I? Just make it a little easier for me to understand!" She heaved out a breath. She didn't particularly want to start a fight, but Chosen One or not, she wasn't going to let herself be bullied. She softened her tone, before she continued. "That's all I'm asking. Please don't be mad."

Ash could've screamed, could've shouted, could've grabbed Melody and shook her. How many times did he have to tell people that he wasn't sure what had happened? That he'd been out like a light for most of it? How many times did he need to repeat himself before people got the idea that he just wasn't sure? They all reminded him of that police lady from Viridian City, for Arceus' sake!

Instead of raging though, he took a deep breath of his own. After, he put his hand overtop of the thrusting gesture she was still leveling at his nose, and eased it downward slowly. "Sorry." Ash tried his best to put on a smile, but it was really really hard. Just the same as Corps training was making him snap and snarl at everything, it was all he could do to keep a positive attitude at times. It took several more deep breaths before he could manage it.

"It's just that I know there's got to be more to it, Ash."

Trying not to let irritation creep into his voice, the ace trainer opted for sarcasm. "I really wish I knew how you knew, when I don't."

He was surprised when melody grabbed both of his arms and shook him, like he was the one being unreasonable. "Because I've only ever felt the way I did, watching that blue light rise up over the forest, once before in my whole life… It was the same way I felt when the harmony of the three legendary birds was broken! It was the same way I felt watching the sky rage overhead, like I could feel all of its weight pushing down on me…"

Melody shook him one more time, and then let him go, just to impress upon him how serious she was. It was the reason she'd gotten to the scene almost dead last. For minutes, it felt like, she'd simply stood there in terrible awe and stared while everyone else had run on ahead. "I won't accept that it was nothing, just the same as I won't accept that a fire Pokemon did all that. No Pokemon that Doc could possibly own could make me feel that way!"

Ash felt himself frown. No, he supposed, that didn't sound like it fit. Still, he hadn't…Well, he did remember some sort of light—but that had just been...well, he didn't really know what. But it had to have some explanation, didn't it?

He brought a hand up to rub the side of his face. "I don't remember…It's not…"

Melody grabbed his elbow in a reassuring way. "Well, let's go through it step by step." She guided him to a secluded spot.

He found himself seated on a cross-beam of the wooden fence that surrounded the green, hopefully just out of sight of any of the roaming DIs. He sat with all ten fingers clasping his brow as he tried to think. Knees bouncing nervously, he went through it all with her, as she guided him.

"And then what happened?" she asked, when he'd finally drawn it all out from the beginning, how he'd leapt from bed and ran like a man possessed, how he'd confronted Bailey whom he'd believed to be a Rocket grunt at the time, all the thoughts and feelings that had coursed through him.

"Well," Ash concluded uncomfortably. "Then he clobbered me…"

"And then?"

Ash tried to force his mind to follow the course of events just a bit farther, but it didn't seem to be able to.

"Did you go out, or something?"

He considered it for a moment. "No," he answered. It wasn't like that. He knew that there was something that had happened after that, yet for some reason, like a forgotten dream, the details were simply gone. "No _I didn't._**"**

He bolted to his feet, scaring her momentarily. "I DIDN'T!"

That opened a whole new world of possibilities! If he hadn't fallen unconscious, then he must've had some role in what had followed! He grabbed his head, cradling it with both arms. Why couldn't he remember, then? He'd gotten plowed in the face, and the next thing he knew, Baily had been in a steaming heap, and Doc had him in a strangle-hold.

He held his hands in front of his face, trying desperately to conceptualize it. What did that mean?!

"Didn't you get angry?" Melody asked.

He started to answer. He really did try, but the sound caught in his throat, and desperately climbed back inside.

The idea overwhelmed him and filled him with instant horror in the way of a pitch black brush with something unknown; a lightless room where the touch of something imagined was a dangerous as the touch of something real. In that same way, his brain reeled, as if trying to reason out that same sudden fright—to convince himself that the thought was not what he'd first suspected it to be.

The real horror, however, was much more profound and clear to him. He was not the frightened child trying to convince himself that he'd simply touched the edge of a piece of furniture, or some carelessly tossed garment. Instead, he was now the devastated young boy who had to convince himself that the all-too-real bogeyman who'd threatened him in the dark was an object best dismissed as the product of his own overactive imagination.

Aura, was the answer.

That was the only truth there could possibly be! It explained everything, all the way back to over a month ago, when he'd met Doc and Holiday in Mt. Moon; Riley and Lucario, his own strange episodes of timely intuition and bursts of strength, all of it!

But no, he insisted to himself, trying in vain to deny it. That couldn't happen to him. Not now! Not yet! Maybe one day he could be a Guardian, but right now he was a trainer! That's what he'd chosen, and that's how it would stay! He hadn't done that on purpose; he hadn't meant for anything at **all **to happen! It wasn't what he wanted! It certainly wasn't something he wanted anyone to know! But now that he knew it, how could he possibly hide it?

"Ash?"

He would just forget about it! Willfully this time! Like something he shouldn't have picked up, he would simply put back the terrible realization where he'd found it, and pretend as though he'd never seen it. Everyone seemed to have their own explanation for it which satisfied them well enough, aside from himself and Melody, so he would simply leave it be.

If Melody struggled to rationalize it, that was her problem. He couldn't confront this. Not now, not soon, and certainly not on his own. He wanted to scream!

He'd sworn to himself that nothing—NOTHING was going to change his course, not even this! He'd set out from Pallet Town with the intention to get his career back on course and thus far it seemed like countless setbacks, either due to lack of foresight, lack of planning, lack of skill, or now, his own apparently involuntary _Aura _that he'd never even said he wanted in the first place!

Why couldn't anything work out the way it was supposed to? Why couldn't at least SOMETHING work out the way it was supposed to? Why couldn't things just be normal for once? Why couldn't he see some returns on all the ass-busting he'd done? Why did everything have to pile up on him like this?! _Why? Why? _**_Why_**_!?_

There had been times lately where Ash had felt like his problems weighed upon his shoulders, but now it felt like all of them filled him like a bad meal, and he'd eaten far too much. He really felt like he was going to throw up. It took him a moment to realize that the reason he couldn't was because he was holding his breath; that he had been for a long time.

He shook all over as as he finally heaved his chest, breathing once out and once in, then he swallowed. It wasn't enough to stop what was coming. He hunched over, shoving Melody away with one quaking hand just in time to avoid hurling on her boots.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to steady out and keep himself from doing it again, when Baily caught him under the arm. He must've looked pretty bad, because Baily didn't even ask him if he was okay, just ushered him along towards the med-check.

Through heavy-lidded eyes, he watched Melody stare at him in confusion and shock as he was led away. It made him feel even worse, but all he could really think was how relieved he was that she couldn't ask him any more questions.

* * *

Cynthia leaned against the edge of her desk, feeling the comfort of the familiar. She was back in the Sinnoh regional offices again, where she belonged. She knew Lance would've liked her to follow up immediately on a few of his leads, but she had other duties of station to handle—the first of which was the resignation letter that Bertha had left for her return.

It hadn't been a surprise, really. Bertha was getting close to retirement age anyways, and Charles' declaration had only hastened the inevitable. Still, it remained what to do about it. She couldn't very well entrust the defense of her title to the Sinnoh Elite Three, could she? Certainly not.

Fortunately, she'd already been thinking upon what to do concerning this likely development. She stood facing away from her newest interviewee.

Cynthia always been, and certainly had always professed to being, a staunch lover of Pokemon. Her ideals and practices concerning Pokemon, at least in that general regard, was to pursue one's passion and never slow down. Certainly, that was just song and dance as any champion would have to tell.

But Cynthia did not believe in idealism for idealism's sake, when it came to battle, though. Being pragmatic, Cynthia realized that it took a special kind of person to make it as high as she'd gotten. Not insofar as talent was concerned—though there was that to consider too—because more so, a person needed to have a certain will to win any engagement, regardless of the cost or connotation. A person needed an appetite, not just for victory, but to defeat their opponent, head-on, and the ability to do that without hang-up or regret.

To most, it was a known fact that the modern conventions of Pokemon training were a legacy of those who'd once called themselves "Warriors" and marched to battle—true battle, with true bloodshed—alongside the Pokemon to which they were inextricably Linked, in the feudal history of the regions. Those ancient paragons of war were the models upon which contemporary battlers were built.

Gone were all the horrific trappings of combat in this day and age; the swords and shields traded for belts and backpacks. With them, so too had faded those old and terrible human lusts for conquest and bloodletting, yet a meager, cold vestige of it lingered on, in some.

Most trainers liked to see battle as simple contest, a struggle between two well-matched opponents, where mettle was tested, and endurance prevailed, and that was that. Never mind that, historically, the difference between victory and defeat would've meant your head on a pike, while the victor claimed the sum of your estate.

If her career had taught her nothing else, it was that for every victory, there was an opposite defeat. In the most blatant terms, one simply couldn't exist without the other. Just as in war, there were spoils won, because there were spoils lost. Victory did not condense from thin air. It came because you snatched it away from someone else.

No, she was not a dreamer. Cynthia knew, that to truly ascend the ladder into the highest echelon of trainers, it took more than plain skill. It took mindset.

It took a killer's instinct.

It meant going into every battle, looking for the shortest, simplest way, not to assure your own victory, but to ensure your opponents defeat. It meant going for the throat, hitting where it hurt, and doing so without mercy, every single time—not in an effort to win, but to force your opponent to lose. Like Chess, the game was much easier to close by slicing your way in at the King and forcing checkmate than it was to win by meeting your fully developed opponent in the center of the board.

Some people saw that outlook as dirty and underhanded, though, and it was no real mystery as to why that was. In the long-standing tradition of the League, a battle had become more about slugging it out toe to toe and giving it your all to see who was the stronger. The fans, especially, ate that sort of thing up, and the media liked to see two honest opponents back-slap each other once it was all over, and say "You won out this time, but next time…"

When it got right down to it, the League was a commercial entity, and the fans and media, it's target market. That was why Lance and his like had risen to such prominence. They were large-hearted battlers who smiled and congratulated their opponents after winning a battle set to the challenger's pace. They did all the things that made people watch them, and tune in to see them take the field. Recordings of many of Lance's earliest defenses were still rerun, even more than half a decade hence.

Her own battles were not often reviewed, for that same reason. They were mostly punctuated affairs that ended quickly, and without the sort of gut-clenching narrative that well-remembered and closely-fought battles often had. It was because Cynthia never offered next times: she smashed her challengers without remorse and without pity, and when she was done, she made sure that all her opponents saw of her was her back, as she strode off the field.

Out of the battling square, she was as personable as you could've liked—though, maybe not so personable as Lance—but the moment she stepped onto that arena floor, when she could feel the roar of the crowd thrumming through the ground, her heart beat in time with those long forgotten war-drums, and she felt like she could've been one of those Warriors in a past life, stomping through the burned and blackened bones of fallen foes, sword quenched in the blood of those who had dared imagine themselves her rivals; as though she and her Pokemon were simply crossing the field of pitched battle, to slake their appetites on the spoils of their newly availed kingdom, cutting down the six remaining stragglers as they passed. From that instant on, for her at least, it was about blood for blood and by the gallon.

The spirit of the times might've condensed it all to a simple game, but even if that was true, it was a game she'd always played to win, and played for keeps. She fought hard, and gave all of herself on the field, but it had never been to match herself against her opponents—it had been to crush them.

It was not something a person could confuse with simple rivalry or anger. It was an ethos that she'd built her whole career around. It was a simple instinct; a basic urge that had been bred out over time, as society shaped itself into its more modern, more tamed iteration. Either you still had it, somewhere deep inside you, or you didn't. She'd only ever met a few others with that quality to them, who had somehow avoided having that latent gene quashed out over the millennia.

Red had been one such, she believed, and she still rued never having the chance to face him in battle. History might've known him as a true boy-king, if he'd been born to the era of Warriors. A demigod of warfare and battle, uncontested and remembered in all the world for his greatness, like Alexander or Mehmed. In this lifetime, all his skill and ambition had brought him was a championship that seemed paltry by comparison, and an early grave.

Still, Red had her respect. That much was true enough, madness or no. It wasn't as though she could dismiss the skill and accomplishments the prodigal son of Kanto had brought to the table, and she wished to Arceus that she might've had the chance to battle against him, as a fully realized Champion. Even still, there was no notion in her heart that she'd have enjoyed sharing a field with him, simply to share it. Had the chance come, she would've done her damnedest to chop his mountainous reputation down to size.

It didn't pay to be a bleeding heart.

She'd battled hundreds, maybe thousands of others in her career, and only a scant few of which brought that same vying nature she had, with them. Some that she'd faced or battled alongside were very skilled, she would grant them, but without that true intent to strike a killing blow, they would only ever make it so far. Talent and ability were the bricks with which careers were built, but core values were what had to hold them together.

Either you just wanted to compete, or you wanted win, no matter the cost. There was no middle ground to walk. In that, for a long while, she'd felt alone. They said it was lonesome at the top, and perhaps that was true.

Recently, she'd faced off against another like herself, though. Bright, ambitious—needing more experience, certainly—but the eyes said it all. She smiled, as she looked back into that face that was so much a reflection of hers.

Paul had strong, remorseless eyes; the eyes of a Warrior.

He just needed a hand to point him in the proper direction, keep him on the right track. If nobody wizened Paul to the ways of the world, a descent into pointless cruelty, while not a certainty, was most definitely in the cards. In the same way that Red's greatness had driven him to hermitage, Paul's could drive the young man over the edge as well, even if it was in a different way, and that would be to the benefit of no one.

With the correct guidance, however, she could and would put someone like that on the express-lane to a great career of their own if they wanted it. Lance had proven that the Elite Four was not so distant a station from the Regional Championship. So long as Paul kept his nose clean, he might make it there, and perhaps beyond…

Perhaps much beyond—Paul may have been comparatively young, yet more than a few had talked about putting Red up for Master candidacy, which were heights that nobody had aspired to in the whole of her generation, alone.

And she could tell, more than anything, Paul wanted those things. He wasn't intimidated by her or by the call he'd received to come here. He might've kept his expression in check, but his eyes gleamed more fiercely the longer she made him wait. Finally, she spoke to him, still standing at the corner of her desk, rather than sitting across from him.

"I'm offering you a position in the Sinnoh Elite four." Cynthia explained, rising straight and crossing her arms. "The taste of that might have a bitter tang to it, but think of it this way: You faced off against me a month ago, aiming to become champion. Is Elite Four really so far short of your target?"

Paul, seeming to consider it, placed his elbow on the arm of the high-backed chair she'd invited him to be seated in, and put his hand to his lips. His reply was scathing, as she might've expected. Paul didn't have a reputation for being glib nor for being blithe. "I wonder: how is it that Iris managed to broker so much higher a price, when you gave her this speech?

She rolled her tongue around her mouth, tasting that acrid flavor of that rebuke. She distanced herself from that. She had eventually come to realize that it was the correct call, but her heart still loathed the idea. "They made Iris a champion in a day. My road is the longer and harder one, but it goes so much higher up the mountain, Paul. Iris, in the end, will be remembered as a short-lived novelty; a reminder that anyone, at any age can find themselves up here at the top, because people think that is what matters."

Paul reclined a bit further in his seat, the beginnings of a smirk curling his lip. "And what really matters, is…something else?"

"If you take something that you have no hope of holding on to, then what is the point? Iris will not retain the championship long. People will frenzy for the title this year, once she becomes eligible for challenge, because they will see her as weak, and they will be right. Her first title defense will come hard, and she, having no experience battling at this level, will likely fall prey to it. I've been here for a while. I've watched this same thing happen more than once, now."

"And when you did watch it, did you think to yourself: if only they had listened to me, they might still be around?" Paul's smirk became full-blown.

Cynthia smiled her own smile then, figuring it was time Paul got the full measure of her. "Some people win it all, just to find out that it was all for nothing. Some are fated only to serve as the transitional caretakers of these cups and crowns we fight for. They hold on to them just long enough for someone who truly deserves them to steal them away, and then history forgets them. That's the true way of things, Paul. Weaklings will always be squashed underfoot by people like us, no matter what is done to help them along the way."

"And you pity that?" Paul asked, brows furrowing with anger. "Is that what you called me here for? Charity?"

"No. Champions become champions for myriad regions nowadays, but the strong still only become strong by winning, and not by charity. You're a strong battler, Paul. Nothing I say or do will take that away from you."

"I agree," the lavender-haired youth hissed.

"But the places I can propel you are the places you want to go. I can see that, so surely you can see that."

Paul, slowly, almost imperceptibly, nodded.

"All I'm asking, is that you put in a little time on my behalf, in exchange. I could benefit from someone like you, the same as you could from me. Two or three years won't hurt you. During that time you'll train with me and the rest of the Elites, when you're called upon to, and you're still free to pursue your personal gain in other regions. It isn't a poor arrangement. If you want to climb to the top, Paul, it's not hard to see that the road goes through me."

Paul's nod continued, from a slow protracted incline of the head, to a more rapid bobbing of appreciation for all that she had said. So, it surprised her a bit, when he flatly declined.

"I won't do it," he decided briskly, standing. He'd dressed sharply today, befitting the audience he'd been given as a matter of simple respect, but he loosened his tie now, as he leveled an accusatory finger. "I have no reason for helping you to defend something that I have every intention of taking away from you." Taking his blazer from the back of the chair, he whipped it over his shoulder, and turned on his heel.

He turned at the door, as she was left there, dumbstruck. "You have a year left, before I come for the title again, and this time I'll take it. I suggest you find someone very good to fill in for your missing Elite. The road I've chosen doesn't go through you, Cynthia, it goes over you."

He met her with a warriors gaze, and she imagined him, armor-clad on the bulwarks of his own burning castle, vowing revenge as he slipped over the battlements and into the night, defeated for now, but ever to be watched for over her shoulder; a potential downfall, an assassin that might cut her reign short if she was ever negligent or unwatchful. When he strode out into the hall, oxfords clacking against the hard tile floor, she felt a chill run down her spine, yet she did not grimace. Instead, she smiled, and rubbed her chin in thought.

Those parting challenges meant that there would never be alliance, or truce between them, but she did not feel her heart filling with anger. True Warriors, just like true Champions, carved out the annals of their lives in combat.

Cynthia was not want for love of battle.

* * *

"Low heart-rate, suppressed blood-oxygen levels, problematic slowing of the liver and an imbalance of spinal-cranium fluid."

"Is that bad?"

"You should be dead," Baily said bluntly. "Or at least, very near to it. If you were unfit to continue, why didn't you say something about your condition, Ketchum?"

Ash thought about it. He did feel pretty crappy, but he'd just sort of thought it came with the territory. After all, it wasn't as though any part of corps training had been particularly fun, and besides, he'd only really started to feel crappy during the last week or so. Ever since the night he'd-

He crushed his eyes shut, like he was trying to blink away a circle on his retina left by staring at the sun; a glaring reminder of something he wanted to forget.

Baily had a point, though. Why was he doing all of this? Sure, he'd decided to stick it out for the sake of an old friend, but was he really doing this for Melody anymore than he was himself? Was he doing it because there were no other options, or because it was really the right thing to do? He tried to remember something that the professor had said to him once...

"A body in motion..." he struggled, before recalling completely, "tends to stay in motion."

"With the same speed, and in the same direction," Baily finished. He leaned back and shrugged slightly, as though he was evaluating some piece in an art gallery he couldn't quite make up his mind about. "And here I thought you were dumber than you were ugly, puke."

Ash didn't even bother to feel insulted. It was as close to a compliment as he was like to get in the corps, and it seemed wise not to let on that he had only an inkling of what it literally meant, so he took it as intended. He knew he must've looked pretty freakin' pathetic anyways. Rather than frown, he gave his own shrug, and answered noncommitally. "Yes sir."

* * *

Riley, quite stern, lowered the letter and the candle he'd used to read it, but said nothing. It was grave news, and so he didn't think it was proper to proffer it forthright. A questioning look from the man who pulled the tack of their tiny skiff made him reconsider, though. He was a Guardian too, after all, even if he had never manifested Aura in quite the same way Riley had.

Riley let the waves toss him up and then down again for just a few moments longer, before slapping the parchment into the hands of Steven Stone. The teal-haired man who'd once been champion read the urgent dispatch with a look of ever increasing concern, even as he leaned casually against the raised mainmast, blanket-sized headsail slapping unseen in the wind behind him.

Steven passed the tack to Riley, offhandedly, who fumbled with it uselessly. The ex-champion meanwhile paced the three-foot long section of planked flooring that was optimistically referred to as the "deck," reading in hushed tones.

"A critical malady most foul, to which you all possess an inclination at one point or another?" Steven asked, one eyebrow raised in query.

Riley frowned, but then realized that, of course Steven would not understand. Steven had next to no talent with Aura, and so he'd never experienced it in the way he had. "Aura-sickness," Riley clarified.

Steven sat on the elevated section of the stern, and scratched his head. "I thought that was just something you got when your Aura first kicked on."

Riley worked his lips. _Kicked on _might not have been that bad an expression to describe his own first experience with manifesting Aura, but it seemed such a crude way to put something so otherwise elegant. He toyed with the idea of giving Steven a good rebuke for talking so lightly about it—he remembered his own bout of Aura-sickness quite well, since it had effected both him and Lucario and had been excruciating for both of—but there was no sense in delivering a tongue-lashing just to serve his own ego, over something Steven had no reason to revere.

"Aura puts an immense tax on the body, Steven." Riley explained, trying to sound off-handed

It must've seemed insincere, because to that remark, Steven only frowned, placing his chin in his upturned palms. "I don't envy you, if that's what you're thinking." Before Riley could react though, he put his hands up defensively. "I respect you and Lucario no end, but I'd much rather leave the fighting to you two."

Riley tried not to seem like he took to much pride in the sideways compliment. Bashfully, he shook the tack once more, having even less effect than the times previous. Thankfully, Steven took it back from him. A long silence followed, as Riley sat in respect of Steven's skills at sailing and traveling in general. Steven was, in a way, the backbone of their chapter of the Guardians.

He was a valuable field-agent, and well-connected in a lot of professional environments, especially within the League. He was the smiling public front that could deflect major attention, and accrue support if they needed it, and he was damn handy if you needed to make a hasty exit. To Riley, it had always seemed that Steven had taken up the Guardian cause just to supplement his chosen form of retirement; that being travel. The Guardians went far and wide, and Steven was the most windblown of them all.

"_I'm just sticking out this whole guardian thing until I figure out something better to do on the weekends," _he would often joke. Still, levity aside, Steven was helpful, and committed to their cause, even if his own powers and mindset seemed to be lacking gravitas.

Steven, breaking the silence, commented wonderingly. "How bad is it, Riley? The sickness, I mean. It's happened to you, right? How did you get it?"

Riley, who'd been contemplative, startled at the question. He thought about it, stopping himself from saying **"**_It happens to all of us,"_in just the nick of time. That was a poser, really. Aura-sickness was a hard thing to explain.

"Imagine," he began, cupping his hand as if trying to conceptualize something vague, but then, an idea came to him. He dug in his rucksack, and produced a paper bag that Deliah had snuck into his possessions, filled with cookies that Steven had obligingly agreed to eat in his stead. Never one to waste, he'd saved the bag itself, and it seemed like the perfect tool to explain his point. "Imagine that you're this bag."

He held it out, firm and flat, sides folded in according to it's original crease lines, letting Steven inspect it in the starlight. The growing look of incredulity let him know he was off to a poor start, so he expedited the explanation a bit. "Normally, people go through life just like this bag."

"Flat, and brown." Steven stipulated.

"Uh, well, sortof. People are closed off to Aura. In that regard, most people are missing that dimension, and so they never really interact with it."

"So they're flat, in a way." Seeming to get it, Steven nodded.

Feeling that it was now okay to expand on the issue, Riley stuck his arm overboard, and dipped it into the water, so that it slid through the current on an edge. "Like this, even though Aura is all around them, every day-"

"Because Aura is in everything," Steven repeated, uttering a Mantra Mewtwo had evidently taught them both, for it was a lesson Riley knew well, too.

"Aura is in everything," Riley confirmed. "but because they don't have that capacity—because they're flat—they slip right on through." The guardian indicated his bag knifing sidelong through the waves, still crisp and straight, in spite of the seawater.

"But, if a person does have that capacity-"

"If they're _open_," Steven clarified,

"Well, then..." Riley worked at the opening with two fingers and let the current open the bag fully. It didn't happen all at once, but instead it slowly expanded, swelling to take on more water as it did so. "...One of two things will eventually happen."

"Either that person develops a slow leak, or they fill to bust and come apart at the seams." Steven implied ominously.

Riley opened his mouth, but then decided that there was really no better way to put it. He nodded. Either someone with the capacity to develop a potential for Aura learned to do it bit by bit, or they exploded all at once, as soon as their body could find an outlet. There wasn't a science to it, and not even Mewtwo could predict it or provoke it into happening a particular way. Riley had been one of the exploders, unfortunately, and it had taken a lot of time for him to get well again, but it had taught him the most valuable lesson in being a Guardian very early on in his career.

Nothing was free. Something could never come out of nothing, and for every gain, even with aura, there was always equal recompense.

He'd grown into a very powerful aura-wielder thereafter, but he'd never forgotten how close his own power had brought him toward a brush with death. He was not eager to fell that pain again, and he could only imagine how Mewtwo must've felt.

Steven spoke, mirroring his own thoughts. "Whatever happened, must've been pretty powerful. I've seen some of the things you do, and Mewtwo, well..."

"Puts me to shame," Riley admitted, before pointing into the distance. "It _was_powerful. I felt an immense burst of aura from over there just a day or so after we set sail. I've only felt aura that strongly just a few times in my life, and we were very far away."

Steven looked at Riley, then off in the direction he pointed. Pausing, he glanced down at the missive again, then back at Riley. "In what direction?"

"Over there." Riley said again. "I remember, because it was just a few degrees north of where the sun rose that morning."

Steven, again, rechecked the letter. "You're sure?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, it says here that whatever it was happened in the northwest of Kanto. At least that was what Ilene managed to get out of him." Steven pointed, his own finger indicating nearly the opposite direction.

Riley frowned, and glanced to where he'd motioned before, almost dead east. He wondered if maybe he'd been mistaken, then, but it had definitely been from that direction, and there was no doubt in his mind that it had been a major aura-event. He looked back to Steven, brows knitting. Steven was the much better sailor, obviously, but he still knew his directions.

"I'm just telling you what it says." Steven explained, handing the parchment back.

Riley re-read it, and sure enough, it was all there in the lustrous navy ink of the Royal Rotan stationery. He glanced up. "I don't think I'm mistaken. But I've never known Queen Ilene to be so blatantly wrong, either."

Steven looped the tack, satisfied with the state of the mainsail, and crossed his arms. "So then the question is, if it wasn't Mewtwo, what the hell _were _you sensing?"

"Something more powerful than I might've believed possible," Riley concluded. "And that may prove a dire threat to us all."

* * *

Honestly, he had no real idea how he'd eventually won over Baily, and kept himself from being discharged, but regardless, he'd managed it. He felt better than he had earlier, and he guessed that must've been corroborated in Baily's medical observation, one way of the other, or the DI, surly as any, surely would not have let him continue

Baily had advised him not to kill himself out there—mostly because of the huge insurance liability that it would be for the corps—but Ash tried not to think of himself as handicapped. Not when he heard what their final objective would be. He would need everything he'd used so far and more to make it through this, he was sure.

Melody, thankfully, had not pressed him anymore about what happened, and even though he sensed a little displeasure in her bearing, he was glad to keep it what way if it meant the questioning was over. She'd gave him a little pat on the back and asked him if he was alright, of course, but she'd said no more and left him to his silence.

He tried to ignore the fact that it made him feel like dirt.

Surge kept them up all night, as it turned out, either out of want for that result, or simply because the preparations took him that long. The sun broke on a record low temperature for this late in May, and they were all standing there shivering when the news broke.

King of the Hill.

The idea had seemed simple, almost stupid, at first, until they'd all marched to the exercise area. It had honestly confused Ash at first since Surge and the DIs were leading them into Vermillion City. Once he saw it, his confusion ended, and his apprehension began.

The massive Vermillion Metropolitan Bascule bridge, it's nearly thirty-meter draw-segment standing straight up over the bay loomed crystalline and ice-coated, loomed before them all. At it's peak, on a tiny platform, created by the edge of the bridge-junction, stood the LT. Though he seemed almost a speck from so far away, he shouted down to all of them through a megaphone, from on high.

"None of you pukes can take this bridge and make a corpsman out of yourselves!" he began, which was typical. In the corps, direction came in one of two forms. Baily wasn't the only one who said backhanded things. If Surge required them to do something, he would say something like "you**will**take these buckets and brushes and show me a barracks floor so shiny I can see my face in it"," but if he really wanted to get their blood boiling, if he really wanted to see results, he would say things like "You **couldn't**even give me fifty suicides if your head was on fire and your ass was catching!"

Positive reinforcement was at a very high premium in the corps, but if the DIs wanted to see real and immediate results, they would almost always motivate them using reverse psychology and insults.

Just as before, the result was almost instant, and unquestionably effective. One thing that Ash had learned while in the corps, was that you be effective, you had to thrive when things sucked. A truly winning mentality in the corps was that, the more things sucked, the more you had to like it, that way if things became truly awful, you were as happy as a Grumpig in mud. A real corpsmen ate dirt, and shit success, Baily frequently said.

All of them that were left, whether they'd made it by sheer nerve, or in spite of themselves, were real, honest-to-Arceus corpsmen, every one. It should have been no surprise then, that entire corps, running on no sleep, zero food and even less morale, roared a great war-whoop, and dove into the surf, swimming, running, clambering through the frigid, soupy foam if they had to. Poke balls exploded open by the tens and hundreds, and Ash and Melody, stunned to see it happening, but still so swept up in it all themselves, were screaming and yelling in wordless outrage and the sweeping emotions of onsetting battle.

Surge was beset from nearly every direction over the next minutes, but he'd had all night to plan.

The spider-webbed superstructure that lined the underside of the bridge was coated with a gossamer of wet and smooth ice, which almost none of the trainees, even with help from their Pokemon could climb—though many more than sense dictated did attempt it. A surprising amount still clung to the beams with tenacity, but their upward progress was so slow that it would be an hour or more before they reached the top.

A massive aerial assault was beaten back with a surprising show of force, as it seemed like all of the trainees, either through willful ignorance or blinded anger, forgot that Surge was an Electric Type Gym-Leader. His Raichu, perched alongside him, calmly took out trainee after trainee trying to sweep down on the wings of a flying Pokemon, with well-placed Thunderbolts, sending them plummeting back down into the water, where DIs waited to drag them and their KO'd Pokemon back to shore and recover.

Surge's Magnezone, stealthily hidden in the beams of the under-structure came forth, as well, shocking trainers and their more climbing-adept Pokemon off their ascent to the same effect.

As Ash shortly found out, there was a threat in the water, too. Surge's Lanturn snaked it's way through the roil, unseen beneath the current but for quick flashes of electric light, and the bobbing, paralysis-induced trainers and Pokemon it left in it's wake.

Still, the corps did not relent, did not retreat from what they were faced with. All of them knew that if Surge broke them now, it would only be that much harder to push their way through the second wave of defenses Surge either would, or already had prepared. They all knew Surge's position was far superior than theirs, but there were too many of them for it to matter.

Well, almost all of them. He looked back, only for a moment, to see Melody slowing down, beside him, as she swam. He knew she was a better swimmer than he was, so it wasn't that she was falling behind, certainly. She looked troubled by how things were going. "C'mon," he urged, "We can do this!"

As they carried on, trying to dodge the Lanturn in the water as best they could, the tide of the battle ebbed and flowed, with some trainers managing to deposit themselves on the platform, only to be air-mailed off of it again by the massive lieutenant, their Pokemon dispatched with quick electrical blasts both from Raichu, and Surge's Electivire, which was soon out beside him, as well.

It seemed like a dead heat for a while, with so many trainers all vying for one aim, and Surge's crafty and expedient efforts holding them fast, Ash couldn't see any reason why the advantage wouldn't fall to the Corps. It stood to reason that Surge could only protect against so many of them, and only for so long.

The Corps was used to being tired, used to being defeated, then getting up and trying again, and the Corps would continue to do so, for as long as it was required. They might not have realized it on quite that level, but that was what they'd had ground into them.

Melody grabbed him by his collar and jerked him aside, amidst the crush, a distinctive tail fin and telling globe of light flickering just beneath the surface. Two trainees to his left jerked in the water, and Ash, while he still felt the teeth-chattering buzz of current in the water, was able to stay well enough way, through her interdiction.

In thanks, he dunked her under the ice-cold water, just as Surge's Magnezone screamed overhead, spitting static into anything it could get a bead on. They surfaced amidst a cloud of spasming bodies, DIs weaving through them to keep their heads above the water long enough for them to bounce back, or drag them out if that didn't seem likely.

Melody seemed even more distressed, now, but they kept on, as much dragging each other as anything. Ash's predilection of automatic success was stifled some, as their numbers thinned, and the fight for the "hill" raged on.

He glanced back. Almost a third of the trainees they'd started beside were out cold now, recumbent where the DIs left them sprawled on the shoreline behind, and another third sat beside them, just as motionless, save for the tell-tale shivers brought on by ice-water and electric shock.

The rest of them, either seemed to be too mad, or too dumb to stop, but one seemed as good as the other in his mind, so he didn't try to figure out which one he was

The water quickly became too deep to run anymore, as they left the commotion of the shoreline behind them. It was not an incredibly distant swim, but it left a lot of open water between them and the bottom of the lattice-work beneath the bascule.

Ash was just a mediocre swimmer any way you sliced it, possessing neither predisposition or skill, but he did have enough experience, athleticism and sheer force of will to make it. Melody, however, took to the water like a Seel, knifing through the foam like she knew a secret path between the waves that moved much faster than the route he'd chosen. He'd had a feeling she could have made it to the bridge long before he would, and he wanted to urge her to do that, but he was having enough difficulty keeping his mouth above the waves long enough to breath while still moving ahead, and he did not dare compound that.

When the churn of the water finally steadied out, having dispersed some from the rest of the corps, he saw the reason for her hesitance. Lanturn, after cutting a swath of devastation through their lines, had circled about to face their leading element, using superior mobility and speed. The truth of the matter, Ash realized, was that they were out of their element. This was a fight that they couldn't win, no matter how much stronger and tougher they'd gotten.

When it got right down to it, you fought fire with fire, and Pokemon with Pokemon, after all.

He kicked both legs and flailed his left arm rapidly to keep himself afloat as he probed for the ball he wanted. He had the perfect solution to this problem! Of course, his perfect solution was stymied a bit by Psyduck emerging from the poke ball he threw, but he tried not to let his aggravation show.

"Water Pulse!" Ash directed.

He'd only just recently gotten Psyduck to use this move, and only then at the end of a very exhausting rigamarole, and only then after asking for Psyduck to perform Confusion, so it didn't surprise him a bit that Water Gun was manifested instead, and directed at him, as opposed to at the approaching Lanturn.

He coughed the water out of his sinuses, and tried to redirect this efforts, "Try Confusion," he managed, after a moment of hacking.

Melody, already implementing her own course of action, beat Psyduck to the punch. Unbeknownst to either Ash or his Pokemon, Melody's Shelder had taken up residence beneath Psyduck. On her command of "Now!" Shelder's upper shell popped open like a spring-loaded launch-pad, and sent Psyduck sailing through the air.

Ash looked on, eyes widened as Psyduck arced through the air, straight towards the oncoming water-type. He looked sideways, his expression still distressed.

"Unlike you, I actually did the math," she touted. He didn't think that was grounds for relief.

It proved not to be, as Lanturn sprang from the water in an obvious Take Down move, bound for mid-air collision with the descending Psyduck. An odd thing, happened, however. A strange purple glimmer had come from Psyduck just before he'd taken off, perhaps the beginning of the Confusion move he'd asked for, which was by all means excellent, given that Psyduck rarely if ever manifested Psychic moves unmolested. That glimmer changed, though, as Psyduck took flight, becoming brighter and more fierce until it was a hot, lavender glare.

He didn't realize exactly what he was seeing until the instant of contact.

"Zen Headbutt, awesome!"

The crack of the two Pokemon colliding, their fierce energies and momentum contesting in a brief spark of momentary struggle, stole the sound of Ash's cheer, but he none the less felt elation as Lanturn was pushed away, ricocheting from his intended conflict, while Psyduck continued in his parabolic, and apparently planned re-entry.

Psyduck landed with a splash, and Ash scrambled through the water after him, to recover his Pokemon ally. The poor little duck, true to his historic lack of grace was spent from the effort, and proved to be out cold, floating limply. All the same, Ash felt a surge of pride, as he scooped the Pokemon back up.

"Look out!" Melody shrieked, drawing his attention away from the tiny bird, and toward Lanturn, who was not quite as defeated as the brief setback had made it seem. The massive fish barreled toward him like a torpedo in the water, intent on shocking him into paralysis just the same as so many others.

Melody's shriek turned out not to be in caution of Lanturn, but rather, in caution of Shelder, Ash found, as the Bivalve Pokemon cut through the air close enough to his skull to have brushed his hair, had it still been long.

Shelder bashed Lanturn full in the face, stopping it dead in the water. A slight sideways kilter to the way it floated thereafter let Ash know the threat was over. He turned to Look at Melody. She had one hell of an arm on her, that was for sure. Her methods might've been a little questionable, but they would work in a pinch, and he'd take them, given the circumstances.

After Melody collected Shelder, who seemed quite cheerful despite being chucked like a frisbee, they swam on, desperate to climb the bridge and join in the assault, which was beginning to turn aside. Raichu and Electivire proved to be more than adept enough to take on the corpsmen and their collective fliers. Ash believed he could probably get up there and give them a run for their money on Charizard's back, but that would mean leaving Melody to her own—albeit seemingly quite effective—devices, and he would need to get out of the water first at any rate.

Bulbasaur was instrumental in getting them on to the lattice-work, since it still lingered about fifteen feet above the surface of the water, but Ash was careful to return the grass-type to the water, saving him for later, once he and Melody had been hoisted up on vines. It wouldn't do for an errant bolt from one of Surge's Pokemon to shut down his toughest partner before the final show-down, right?

Once they were both up and climbing, he tucked Bulbasaur's ball back onto his belt. He might've liked to have a safety-line for his climb up the frosty metal framework, but he just had to trust in his own skills and in Melody's to see him up instead. His hands slipped and slid, but his grip was sure. His fear was gone. There was nothing in his way anymore.

He pushed both feet against the angled cross beam, knowing that they'd lose traction, but he only needed to push himself up far enough to grab the next joist. When he caught hold of it, he hungrily went for the next one. Melody, beside him, climbed with equal fervor, eyes intently focused upward. Neither bothered to look back, and it was probably a good thing.

Not too far overhead, Magnezone emerged once more from it's hiding place in the beams, and dealt devastating electrical shocks to five trainees above them. Two held tight, whether by choice or involuntary tightening of the muscles, Ash wasn't sure. The other three fell slack and tumbled backwards, with the unintentionally humorous disposition of people falling into soft beds, though their descent would take them many tens of feet into frigid ice-water.

Ash reeled away, as Magnezone floated downward toward them, but then stopped himself. It wouldn't do him any good to try and hide, since the entire underside bridge was a big conductor. Anything but a clean miss would do. He slapped for the ball he wanted, and he could see Melody trying to angle herself behind the joist she was clinging to, but it was already too late.

The burst of energy struck him like a massive slap, jarring him everywhere. His teeth clenched so hard he though for sure he'd chipped one, and every fiber in his muscles tensed into knots. He felt ice crack under his fingers, he was gripping so hard, and his vision popped in a crazy wash of blues and whites. When the moment of pain and heat was done, he could see Melody, a placid expression on her features, slip from her perch.

His footing was unsure, but it didn't matter. He needed Charizard to catch Melody, so it wouldn't make much difference if he had to catch them both. He cast the ball out in the air before himself as he felt his grip give way, and dove for the dragon-shaped shimmer. He hit scales and dug his haunches in, taking the transition from fall to dive in one fluid motion.

Catching Melody by her shoulders in clawed hind-limbs, Charizard looped back to face their aerial adversary as best as he could, so burdened. Magnezone, still deadly and fast, blasted Charizard with another Thunderbolt just as the fire-type let off a Flamethrower. Rather than these two attacks meeting head-on and negating one another as Ash might've liked, both attacks were aimed with a slight lead on their targets and so the two streaks for yellow and red passed each other cleanly to wreak mutual devastation.

It had all happened so fast...

Ash braced himself for impact as Charizard sailed headlong into the lattice, busting a steel joist loose and bowing another inward with his powerful and immense frame. The crash sent both trainees into the tangle of wrecked steel. When the whole world stopped spinning for Ash, he could see Melody before him, a trickle of blood streaking down from a gash in her cheek, shaking him with one hand as she balanced herself on all three of the others like a tripod.

He shook his wooziness away. Charizard was weakly trying to disentangle itself and take flight again, but the super-effective electric type move had done its work. Charizard could barely move, some parts of his powerful body frozen stubbornly and unresponsive. Paralysis had set in. Ash sucked in a breath through his teeth, as he recalled his Pokemon. That was a major set back.

"Damn," he swore, but he felt like a fool for doing it, when Melody pointed across him, slack jawed, and he realized that was the least of his worries. Charizard had been leveled by the electric-type attack, but Magnezone was still swinging, even with a large section of it's hull glowing red with the residual heat of Charizard's flamethrower. It's bulbous form hovered in to finish them off, but Ash was just plain mad, now.

He thumbed a ball on his hip, and taking a page from Melody's book, he simply hurled the thing straight at Magnezone. It twanged off the Pokemon's dense metal cover to little immediate effect. When it popped open, and dumped Snorlax out, however, things changed.

The two Pokemon plummeted, magnetic levitation succumbing to the cruel forces of gravity, under the sudden appearance of a half-ton of dead weight. A column of water almost as high as the distance the two entangled Pokemon had fallen kicked up after them, and it was a long time before they floated back to the surface, one obviously incapacitated, the other simply asleep, as was Snorlax's habit.

Ash returned his Pokemon and glanced toward Melody who was giving him an exasperated look. He shrugged. "Who needs math?"

Their climb resumed, sobered somewhat by their encounter. They were a little dinged up, and Ash felt like he might've busted his elbow up pretty badly, because it was increasingly difficult to pull himself up, but he went on. Trainers still splashed down sporadically from overhead, and there was certainly a bracing quality to that fact, compounded by the almost complete lack of trainers climbing alongside them. The remainder of those still left in the water below that had not fallen prey to Lanturn seemed to lack either the ability or the means to make it up the lattice, but they were doing their part from the water, directing long-range attacks toward the upper platform with varying degrees of success.

They made the rest of the ascent as fast as they were able, eventually coming shoulder to shoulder with a line of other trainees who seemed to be balking from the prospect of coming over the lip of the platform. Before Ash could even open his mouth to ask why, one of the trainees, Oscar Squad from the looks of him, made a try for it, and got blasted clean off the bridge by a full-force Thunder. He fell from a dizzying height, and nobody was eager to join him.

Ash hissed in frustration, but Melody was the first into action. "Come over here and gimme a boost. I need both hands."

He did as she required, climbing beneath her so that she could sit on his shoulders and lock her legs against his sides, leaving the matter of station-keeping to him, as she set to work.

Slowly, she raised her cover up over the edge of the platform, testingly. It didn't take more than a split-second for the cover to shoot from between her fingertips, and spiral down toward the bay, sizzling as it went.

A split-second seemed to be all she required, though, as she heaved, and twisted over the edge, nearly throwing the both of them off the joist as she threw Shelder with everything she could muster. A loud, wet smack told Ash the technique had once more proven effective.

"Maybe you should stop doing that." Ash chastised, nonplussed by the close-call.

Melody looked down at him. "You're kidding, right? That's our signature move! Ain't it, Shelly?|

Melody glanced up and smiled as she saw Shelder cut a cheerful, spring-loaded somersault in response. Unfortunately, Electivire, face and ego stinging, took the opportunity to punt her Shellder off the platform, sending it tumbling down into the bay like so much else.

"Aw, Cheap!" Melody complained.

Raichu, off to the left, took a momentary reprieve granted by lull in the long-range and aerial attacks to crack of a defensive Thunderbolt, just as Melody set her arms and moved to mount the platform, sending her and Ash tumbling over backward, as the others surged over the platform as one.

Ash curled his legs, trying to hold onto the beam upside down and still hold onto Melody, but the joist was slippery and wet, and Melody twitched too sporadically to keep a good hold on. In a desperate bid for stability, he curled one arm around Melody's thigh, and slapped at his belt desperately. His grip on Melody had slid all the way down to her service boot before he got Bulbasaur out and into action.

With the way things were he was lucky even that Bulbasaur was able to get himself into a stable position, much less save them from their own certainly doomed perch, but somehow the little Pokemon managed it. The vine whip around his midsection was almost painful, but it still looked a hell of a lot better than the icy bay so far below. When they'd all finally managed to get ahold of the lattice once again, Ash took the opportunity to refocus. The battle above did not sound as though it was going well.

"I'll go up, you should loop around and come about on the other side. Surge won't expect that."

Melody didn't see how she was going to traverse almost twenty feet of glass-like pavement. She had Gulpin, of course, but that was hardly going to help her climb. Maybe if she had two Gulpin she might be able to pull that off, but otherwise what Ash was talking about was strictly impossible. "How you figure?"

Ash shrugged, and looked a little irritated. "You've still got Wingull, right?"

Melody felt her features flatted. "Wingull can't carry me." Seriously, Ash had seen a Wingull before, right? Hell, her Wingull was small even by Wingull standards!

Ash's brow arched incredibly high, which did nothing but piss her off, and she was prepared to ignore any argument he had on the spot, except for the one he presented. "Pokemon don't understand _can't. _They either will, because they trust you, or they won't because you have no trust in them."

He left her with that, angrily, and she felt a heat rise in herself as well. In fact, after just a moment or two she was climbing after him, eager to share a piece of her mind on the matter. Her fury robbed her of much foresight apparently, because the next thing she knew she was on top of the platform in the midst of pitched battle.

It was total chaos atop the "hill" with nine trainers and every Pokemon they could bring to bare slugging it out blow by blow. There was barely even enough room to stand, much less fight.

Ash, and four other guys from Kilo managed to beat back Electivire, and that was only after the electric type had dispatched nearly a dozen of Kilo's Pokemon in quick succession, and all four of them had physically tackled the Pokemon themselves, at risk to their own hides. Even that had proven useless until Ash, bringing up the rear had directed Bulbasaur to lasso Electivire's legs and pull it's wide stance out from under it. Unfortunately, it had also had the side-effect of dumping all four Kilo trainers over the edge as Electivire wrapped them all in a tight bear-hug, with Bulbasaur pulled along for the rude, unable to disentangle himself, and unable to find traction on the icy surface. Ash leapt for his Pokemon, but it was too little too late.

Another group of corpsmen from Foxtrot were battling Raichu and having an even harder time of it, it seemed, since the aerial threat had ostensibly collapsed. Raichu was the Gym Leader's oldest and strongest Pokemon and the trainees in Foxtrot were certainly feeling that as their own oldest and strongest were pushed aside time and again. Melody tried to look past that, though, and direct her efforts toward Surge. She'd lost Shelder for the time being, but a part of her wondered if it might be satisfying to see Gulpin go splat across the LTs face, a sticky reprisal for all the suffering they'd gone through, but that simply didn't suit her ends.

Instead she cast out Gulpin at her side, and called for a Sludge attack. She pointed to indicate the intended target; not Surge himself, but a patch of icy platform just before him, a space she intended to occupy. She knew from experience that the sticky gunk would help with traction which she would need against Surge to maintain what little wisp of hope she had in upsetting his footing and forcing him off the hill.

Naturally, it bothered her when Surge proved opportunistic enough to step into that spot himself, and meet her rush with an overhead throw that used her own momentum against her. As she sailed through the air, well clear of the platform with nothing beneath her but nearly a hundred feet of open air and the choppy surface of the frigid bay below, there was nothing at all she could do.

Ash cursed again as he spun and scrambled back to his feet. He'd seen Melody take a dive, spotted the inky spot on the platform and put two and two together. It was time for his own signature move.

Tauros emerged from the ball at a full charge, horns lowered and nostrils flaring. If Surge wanted to stick to one spot, Ash would make him pay for it.

Still, Raichu was not down and out, and as faithful old Pokemon went, Raichu was second to few. A massive ThunderShock threw it's remaining contenders from the platform and the Mouse Pokemon flung itself at Tauros sidelong with alacrity. Deceptively strong for it's size, Raichu's Body Slam was more than enough to turn the bull Pokemon aside. As it had many times of late, Tauros' headlong charge proved the Pokemon's downfall. Together, the two Pokemon tumbled into the sea.

Spitting mad, and now all alone, the young trainer wasted no time in charging Surge headlong, and ramming him with everything he had. The impact was jarring and painful...Ash felt like he was trying to tackle a tractor-trailer.

Surge was nearly as wide as the young trainer was tall and towered over him, besides. Still, this couldn't be decided until it was done. Surge was coming off this bridge one way or another.

Surge shoved him down, and wrestled his arms away, but the boy refused to give in. He tucked his face into his shoulder and kept pulling and heaving, wrists locked tight behind Surge's back. Gulpin even shot another ball of Sludge at his boots in an effort to grant him more traction. It wasn't a clean hit, and mostly just got on his pants, but he appreciated the help.

Still, all the appreciation in the world would get him nowhere. His feet slid on the ice, while Surge remained in place, huge hands wedging in to pry Ash off. "You'll have to do better than that, Ketchum!"

With a jerk, Surge pried his arm free and set to working on the other one with both hands, to throw Ash away just as he had Melody.

But there was no way that Ash was going to let that happen. "I came too far to fail now!" Ash roared.

It was time now, he decided. Time to use the one trump card he'd withheld all month long. Rather than try to wrap Surge back up, he tucked himself tight against the man, and ripped his first poke ball from his belt. With a quick thrust, he slammed the ball up between them. It popped into the gap between their chests, and spat out its contents.

"I need you! Please help me!" Ash screamed, even as the tiny Pokemon nearly uppercut him by appearing in such a cramped space.

It was a moment of true exaltation as Pikachu, and about a million volts came screaming to his aid.

The current ripped through Ash like a tidal-wave, making him feel like he was lighting up all over, but he didn't even care. After more than a month, it felt welcomed! As sparks jumped between his teeth, he grit them, and redoubled his efforts.

All that power and surging emotion built in his arms and his legs. Ash dug deep as his muscles spasmed and tensed to explode with everything he had in him. His and Pikachu's cries rang out as one, and he lifted with all his strength and more.

He was stunned, when Surge stuffed his efforts with a palm across his back, preventing his forward surge. "Don't you know how electricity works? Shortest path to ground, remember?"

Ash, deflated, chanced a glance below him, to the concrete break-segment still covered in ice. Long strings of blue static still arced from his legs down into the wet surface beneath him, but where Surge stood it was caked with that thick gray Sludge, which was apparently a pretty good insulator. He wasn't even being shocked, Ash realized, and it made him feel crushed.

But then, he just felt angry. If he couldn't feel the juice, then he would just get Pikachu to turn it up! Looking up at Surge, he narrowed his eyes. "Pikachu!" he snarled. "Shock harder!"

Surge rolled his eyes and snorted, shoving Ash to his knees. "That's just gonna hurt you more, idiot! Why don't you think with your head instead of your ass?"

"_**You mean like this?!"**_

Melody, clinging tightly to Wingull even as the tiny bird glided in on the southern wind, angled her hips sideways, so as to maximize the impact of Surge's face with her posterior. She crashed into him, like a missile from a dive-bomber, as she let go of her Pokemon, and met surge in a reversed, flying body-drop.

Surge was a strong man, but even at well below fighting weight, Melody was still close to a hundred pounds of muscle and bone that could not be ignored at such high speed. The blow sent Surge's head and shoulders whipping back, and Ash felt his load become suddenly lighter.

He heaved the off-balance Surge from his feet, and spilled him over backwards, where they both slipped and tumbled on the ice. In stark contrast to Ash's plans, however, the pair of them kept sliding and sliding trapped by their own momentum, even as they thrashed to get untangled from one another and clawed for their own handholds.

Their long, scrambling slide across the ice dumped them both over the edge, but there, where the ice broke, there seemed to be enough uncovered ground to seize hold of, leaving them both clinging by hands and elbows as their feet were unable to find purchase on the slick vertical surface of the raised bridge. Unable to climb up, and refusing to let go, Ash had only one option left.

Surge was going to leave this platform before he did, no matter what, but Ash's strength, skill and determination had all run dry.

Still, he had one thing left. A thing that might've seemed very small to others, but to Ash, it was the single biggest influence on the course of his life and career since he'd come of training age. It was his secret weapon, and it was his saving grace. To him, this single thing represented half of his strength as a trainer, and it had left him feeling like both hands were tied behind his back for nearly a month now.

It was the reason Surge glanced toward him with a grimace, but Ash could only grin in reply. It was all over. Surge was finished, and so was Ash's tenure in the Corps.

Scrambling on tiny paws, Pikachu shot up his jacket, and burst from the inside of his hood, before taking a flying leap at Surge. The LT had nowhere to go but down, and though he chose not to do that willingly, when Pikachu hit him full across the face and discharged massive current into him, his arms and legs all shot out straight involuntarily anyways.

Down he went, leaving Ash the sole conqueror of the rock, and king of the hill, even though he was just barely clinging to it. He clung to the platform for just a few moments longer, looking around for the faces he wanted to see in the water below.

Everyone and everything was so tiny at this height, but he didn't mind. Somewhere down there, Surge, Melody, and Pikachu were looking up at him. It was finally over. He sucked in a breath and let go, tumbling backwards. He felt it helped his feeling of ascension to allow himself to believe he was actually rising towards them, as he fell upside down.

Melody and Surge below, however looked on in apprehension.

"He doesn't look like he knows how to dive," Surge commented.

"I don't think he _does _know how to dive." Melody responded, her expression gradually changing from a frown, to a grimace, to a full on wince.

From the casual nature of Ash's belly-flop, it became readily apparent that he did not. He'd looked like he expect to fall into a giant mound of pillows, so Melody figured the surface of the water must've seemed shockingly like concrete by comparison. Very cold concrete, at that.

Ash hit the water with a magnificent slap, and did not come back to the surface as quick as he should've.

"Probably knocked himself out cold." Surge remarked, turning and waving for Bailey.

Melody, Pikachu, Snorlax, and even a struggling Tauros, however, were already on the task of fishing their dear friend Ash Ketchum out of Vermillion Bay.

* * *

"I wish I was that tall." Diana complained quietly aside, as she watched the gym-leader stretch up to the tips of her toes in order to close the top-most controller cover for the aquarium central control system. It was a panel that Diana had to stand on a ladder to reach.

"I just wish I was as fast." Briana replied in a whisper, after stifling a yawn. "I showed up at five AM, thinking that maybe today I could get in here before her and run all these checks myself." She pulled aside the energy drink in her hands to reveal a folded stack of checklists. "No. She was already doing them."

"At five? Wasn't she—wait—what is she even doing here?" Diana asked, after blinking for a moment. "Didn't she and her sisters go on and on yesterday about her taking the day off?"

"Yes," came a voice from behind him, startling both girls badly. Diana let out a squeal, and Briana splashed a bit of her drink on herself. Parker stood in the doorway, even as Misty spun to face them, alerted to their presence. "They did," he finished pointedly, with an arched look at the redhead.

Misty had the sense to look abashed, but she kept right on doing her checking, all the same. "I don't have anywhere I need to be until 10, so I thought I'd just come by and get a little work done," she admitted.

Diana and Briana both pulled faces. Even Parker frowned. Still, the sailor turned to the two other girls and bid them take care of opening of the reception room, and throwing the breakers for the overhead lighting in the fore-half of the gymnasium.

Misty didn't turn to face Parker as he strode towards her, between the two massive machinery and electronics banks. Still, he pried for her attention. "Ma'am. A word?"

She gave him a glance, as she made the last few tabulations on her sheet, then turned, looking like a child expecting to be admonished, and preparing defiantly.

"Now, don't make that face. I just want to give you some advice, Ma'am."

Misty had every notion that she didn't want to hear it, because she was pretty certain that it was advice being passed on behalf of Daisy, but all the same she tucked her checklist behind her back and raised her eyebrows, to soften her expression some. "Advice?"

Parker extended his hand, open, towards the door, indicating he wished to impart this particular advice whilst on the move. She took long strides down the hall, and he matched her pace briskly.

"When I was in the Navy, I didn't begin as an officer. I began my career as an enlisted sailor. Do you know the difference?"

Misty nodded. "I think so." Before she'd met Parker, she'd always thought that one sortof flowed into the other, but she'd since learned that this was not the case; Officers were commissioned as such—Enlisted were not.

"I worked in the navy going through all the different enlisted ranks for fifteen years before I got my commission and because of that, even though I was a very junior officer, I knew a lot more about how things worked than a lot of the other officers I worked with. Ensign is a very junior commissioned rank, you understand."

Misty smiled. "I see."

"A lot of times, I'd see these other Ensigns fresh out of Academy, twenty two or twenty three, who would work themselves to the bone trying to make their detail look as good as possible for the department head. Go out of their way to double and triple check the enlisted men, even try to assist in their responsibilities if there was any shortcoming or discrepancy, that sort of thing."

Parker didn't say anything for a long while, and Misty, puzzling over what he'd said, slowly drew to a stop, brow furrowed. She expected something along the lines of "...and then they dropped dead of exhaustion, and the moral of the story is: don't be like the hard-working Ensigns," but there was no such conclusion forthcoming, obviously.

She was almost sure that was how her _sisters_would've concluded the story, yet flat, cautionary conclusions didn't seem to be Parker's style.

Phrasing her question carefully, as she turned to him, Misty crossed her arms. "Why was that wrong?"

Parker smiled, evidently appreciating the fact that she could see that there was a problem, even if she didn't know what it was. With poignancy, he delivered his answer. "An officer that interferes with the tasking of a subordinate, regardless of express intent, implies a lack of confidence in the competency of that subordinate to do their assigned task."

Misty tongued the inside of her cheek. "So, what you're saying is that I-" she felt her eyes widen with realization. "Oh."

She realized, with mortification, just what a grand thing Parker was talking about. It was her habit to take care of what she could on her own, after all, and she did not usually start her regiment until she had come in and made sure that all was well with the facilities. It was what she'd always done before at the start of her day, so it had always felt natural to continue doing it, even after she'd given the job to the girls.

Granted, she had no real excuse for being in here on her day off, other than she was bored to tears being up this early with nothing to do. Her sisters would probably all sleep until well after she was gone, and that left her with little to nothing to accomplish except wait, or sneak in some training, which her sisters had strictly forbid.

She thought back on that argument, her blood rising.

"_You're so tired when you come home that you fall asleep at the dinner table," Daisy had advised maternally._

"_I do not."_

"_We've totally had to wake you up three times this week to keep you from getting food in your hair." Lily insisted_

"_Well maybe I wouldn't fall asleep if the meals weren't so boring!" she'd shot back, trying to elbow Lily back out of the argument she was so clearly losing._

_She'd almost believed she'd managed it too, when Violet, ever the one to seize an opportunity to criticize, conceded her point. "You are a pretty lousy cook."_

"_Like you're so great!" Lily hissed, happily forgetting to redirect._

_Daisy, however, was possessed of a certain low cunning not easily befouled by infighting. She met Misty's self-satisfied smirk with a disapproving glare. "Two of those times it was your night to cook, Misty, so that excuse is total bull."_

She struggled not to let her temper flare too high. First, just because they had no frame of reference for having done a difficult day's worth of work in their lives, her sisters demanded she take the whole day and do nothing related to training, and now Parker was telling her that by coming in here and trying to get something of worth accomplished, she was actually just getting in everybody's way and making them feel like dirt.

She rubbed her temples. She supposed they all had their own points to make, and it wasn't like she could realistically say any of them were wrong. She still didn't like any of them, though.

Still, what she couldn't figure out was why in the hell she had to feel so damn rotten about taking an actual break. Didn't she deserve one?

"Fine, I get it," she eventually conceded. She flicked her gear out of her pocket to inspect the time. "I guess I ought to get out of here anyways. Casey's probably waiting for me." She resisted the urge to say she would be taking Gyarados with her, since she doubted her sisters would ever let her hear the end of it, should that get back to them.

"_Jeeze, you can't even go one __**day**__, Misty!?"_

"What's on the docket this morning, if I might ask?" Parker asked, disrupting her inner turmoil.

"Baseball," Misty said, with the sort of inflection that might imply she still didn't know how to feel about it, because she didn't. Still, she had left it up to Casey, and the choice had been made, regardless of whether she should've known better or not.

At Parker's knowing smile, she left with her own lopsided grin, adjusting the brim of her cap, and trying to look confident and relaxed, in spite of how naked she felt without her belt on, and how irritated she was at her day's poor start.

* * *

Anabel's life was nothing short of a balancing act; a great weight that required constant adjustment to compensate for.

On the one hand, she had to try the best she could to live with her raw self on her sleeve, bared for everyone to see. It worked okay, because she wasn't very good at hiding her feelings, but that didn't make it any less hard, because on the other hand it was really only out of a sense of obligation to balance out the fact that she could force anyone else to do the same for her, without difficulty.

Seeing into others had not always been a choice, after all. She'd not always known how to look away, how to blind herself, to the inside of a person's heart. Her lack of willingness to intrude in the hearts of others, had never been a product of propriety.

There had been a time, years ago, when she'd liked nothing more than to greedily plunge into the hearts of others, to know their desires and secrets as well as she might know her own. Secrets were fun, innocent things in those days; things that were to be collected and doled out in small quantities for amusement. Desires were things you blushed over, and politely spared from mention.

In time, though, she had learned better, and the lesson had not come easy. Some people, no matter how harmless they appeared, had dark things inside them.

No, the privacy she now allowed those who bared themselves to her was not for moral reasons at all. Rather, it was a product of self-delusion, and ultimately, self-defense. Her own ability, wanted, chosen, abused or not, had ultimately led to pain, whatever its application. Certain…things, had come to light. Trends that eventually, she could no longer ignore.

If the world was ultimately full of liars and self-interested, cruel people, and you could not completely shut yourself away from it, wasn't it easier to simply pretend that was not the case, than live with constant contempt in your heart?

Still, the lessons learned in her childhood had come back with a vengeance, now. Paramount of these was staring her in the face now. The Kanto Champion, and chief custodian of her employer's legal affairs for the time being, stood before her cell door, eyes downcast, and smile hopeful. She didn't need to hear what he was saying, because the truth of it was that she'd known the whole story before Lance even told it to her. She could read it all in his eyes that avoided her direct gaze.

There had been times in her life when she struggled with her gift. It shamed her to believe that most of those times, like this one, had come after a long period of self-delusion, in which she pretended that people were not painted-on niceties over malignant rot; times when the truth that people held in their hearts came to bear, and she saw them for the self-serving and beguiling things that they really were, as opposed to penciling in happy fantasies of her own in the places she would've rather not looked.

A voice she recognized from long ago, the voice of herself as a twelve year old girl, explained it to her properly, backed by the weight of perfect hindsight.

Behind every smile, that small girl reminded herself, hides another lie.

She wondered, in a brief moment of anger, if she lunged for him between the bars, would she be able to scratch away the smile on Lance's face, to see the sneer hidden underneath. Would those curled lips flake away like bad stucco, to show her a true reflection of the heart belonging to the man below?...

And would it really make her feel so bad, if she only came away with bloody fingers and skin beneath her nails?

She'd spent a week in jail; Disgraced, humiliated. Her career was ruined, her image was destroyed, and worst of all, she'd been framed for a crime uncommitted—knowingly—by a man she'd worked for almost five years now, and that she had respected. In spite of that all, she could tell that she was no more than broken eggshells to Lance. Her downfall had been the necessary destruction of an expendable thing, for a greater purpose. Sure, he was here to provide his condolences, pay her bail, and clear the charges against her, but she had no doubts at all concerning what was going on, here.

No more, she told herself. She wouldn't let them continue to parade her around as their patsy because it was convenient to them.

Yet, what could she really do? Telling anyone the truth would do her nothing to diminish her humiliation, and further it would only damn a man she'd made her own promises to, to scrutiny and worse. If it came to that, she had no choice but to bear it, in silence. Just because the world was ugly, didn't mean she would be.

Riley's intervention had saved her life, whatever else it had caused.

She'd lain awake at nights in this small, chilly holding-cell, and prayed for Riley to come rescue her from her unforeseen misfortune, yet again. She'd hoped to wake, even today, and find herself somewhere far gone, perhaps in that castle Riley had spoken of, in Rota, to the far north. Yet, her eyes had come open, only to Jenny and Lance, standing quietly outside the door, and the shards of her future still cast about in front of her, broken and hollow.

It was a foolish hope, she realized. She'd spurned Riley. She couldn't expect him to help her, even if he'd said that the Guardians would be there.

She had to remember that, while Riley cared, that care was implicit, and general to everyone. Riley's job was to be caretaker to a large part of the world, not simply be beholden to her best interest. The truth, the hard, cruel truth, was that Riley had been there to recruit her, and his professional courtesy had only been a veneer, even if it was an honest one.

The bottom line was that he'd helped her simply to ingratiate her to the guardian cause, and thus absorb her skills into the fold, for their own benefit. Saving her from this disaster at Tohjo had simply been the means to an end. They were no more friends than they were the star-crossed lovers Deliah believed they were. Her life was not in peril at present, and Riley cared no more for her comfort and dignity than he had for her refusal of him.

Lance had set to diplomatically explaining the league's reasoning for laying charges upon her head, in diluted terms. He spoke of responsibilities and grand ideals; sacrifice, and the needs of the many outweighing those of the few, but she was no longer listening.

"That's enough." She said quietly, interrupting someone who was quite possibly the most prestigious league figure in their half of the world. She didn't have any more patience for excuses, the same as she didn't have any more patience for lies. "I don't need to hear anymore."

Lance, perhaps stunned, but not faltered, nodded to Officer Jenny, who unlocked her handcuffs and briskly tucked them away. He had to know that she wasn't going to want to hear an explanation from him. "Scott is waiting for you outside in my limo. My driver will take you both back to Indigo Plateau."

Her look told him in no uncertain terms, that she hoped he would not be in that car, as well, and for a just moment, he wondered what she might do, whether or not he should've been there for safety's sake. He couldn't imagine that they wouldn't share words with one another, some of them probably very loud and hateful, if her brisk coldness with him was any indication.

Still, that was better left between Anabel and Scott, he reasoned. If it came to violence, he was sure that even if Scott couldn't take care of it, Will could. Anabel was a skilled battler, but she was just a little girl, and would not be likely to cause trouble in that regard.

He heaved a breath once he'd turned his back on her, following Jenny's lead out of the cell and down the corridor, and brought a hand up to rub at the bridge of his nose.

Already today, he'd gotten word back from Silver about the crash-site in the northern Kanto forest. He really wished he'd sent someone else to look it over. He was sure he was going to remember that carnage for the rest of his days. Silver had assured him that he would find two bodies at the site, but only a Salamence corpse had remained.

It put him in a terrible position all around, as there was next to nothing he could do without implicating Silver. He dared not even mention such an absence to Silver, for fear of what the man might do, and there wasn't a chance in hell that he could bring the crash-site's existence to light in any way shape or form to the proper authorities without implicating himself, and by extension, the league.

He'd already set up an arrangement with an overseas business entity that just so happened to have specialists available to help him track down the perpetrators using evidence from the site, but had promised to keep the matter strictly confidential. The were supposed to arrive before the week was out.

All of this dirty business was going to make him into a man as old as Charles Goodshow, before he knew it. Granted, he was still mostly following Charles' lead in this matter, but it irritated him just how much he agreed with the necessity of it, in direct contradiction of his own values.

"Comes with the job, kiddo," Charles would often tell him. "And you sure picked a doozy of a time to take over the big-seat."

Not for the first time he wondered if it wasn't a position better left to Cynthia. She seemed to have all the propensity and cunning required, and not nearly so many reservations as he did. Yet, according to Charles, it took a healthy balance of heart and reason, and that was why the old man had picked him as the successor to the business end of his dynasty, and her to battling end. "Brains," he would say, "has surprisingly little to do with it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr. Goodshow," Lance murmured sarcastically, as he led the young frontier brain out of the police lock-up.

Penny sat at her desk, one hand pulling stridently across the top of her desk. It was a difficult thing she was doing, and she didn't want to be approached or interrupted, while she was at it, so she tried her best to look very irritated. She did her level best impression of a person waiting in heavy traffic. It wasn't that she truly was annoyed, though, quite the opposite, really.

"Yes." She said in a protracted way, into the receiver of her cell, keeping her tone of voice low. "Sure, if you want."

She felt like she was being watched, so she nodded as though listening to a long and complicated set of instructions, one hand scribbling what might've looked like notes to someone else, but was actually long strings of hatch-marks, which immediately made her feel silly. She messed her face up, and tried not to let any self-deprecation creep into her voice. "I'm at work right now, actually."

She peered around then, trying to see if anyone was looking directly at her. "No, it's fine, I can talk." She didn't have anything major that needed taking care of at the moment, so it wasn't like she couldn't spare a couple minutes. She went back to pretending she was doing paperwork. "I'm on call all this week, but things are pretty quiet. I should be able to."

She betrayed a slight smile. "I don't mind. If he wants to come, let him come." She recognized the false hesitance in his tone for what it was: Mark was a parent before all else, so he was surely testing the waters when it came to her acceptance of his son. The truth was that she liked Jr., really, which seemed almost strange, now. She'd never thought of herself as caring all that much for children before, but little Mark was very likable, even for a five-year-old. He had an odd sort of way of growing on you, much like his father, and she often found herself striking up a conversation with him, just to see what sort of things he'd say next.

"No, really. I'd love to, I…"

She felt her grip falter on the phone as the two walked past her cubicle, and toward the front. "What the fu…"

The mobile nearly slipped from her hand and clattered to the table, but she caught it at the last second, and said a hasty goodbye. "I have to call you back!"

Glaring over the wall of her cubicle, she saw that it was Anabel, and who else, but that slick-haired double-talker Lance! What the hell was going on here? He'd weaseled his way into a closed investigation site, and put up bail on their perp?

Before she could spring up and go find out on her own, though, someone behind her shrieked, and destroyed her train of thought. It turned out to be Jenny, who, just as fast as she'd set it down, snaked her hand in and swiped the phone off of her desk. She held out the phone, pointing at the latest incoming call with a white-gloved finger. "I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!" she hooted.

With a snarl of frustration and a deceptively massive grasp of her own, Penny's enveloped the phone and the hand holding it, with vice-like pressure. Slowly, her other hand rose to extract what belonged to her, and tuck it away into the safety of her breast-pocket. She didn't say anything—and it was primarily because she was too embarrassed to—but her look promised pain enough that Jenny's smile turned to wide-eyed fear.

"I-I was just leaving." When Penny's hand popped open like a set bear-trap, the officer practically stumbled over herself to take her leave.

Penny nearly sank back into her seat and tried to rub the mortification from her features, until she remembered what had set this off in the first place. She sprang up from her seat and tried to follow the two suspicious figures down the hall, but she was blocked again. She tried to edge past her obstruction, but this one was more tenacious.

"Penny!" her Sergeant barked, as she tried to peer around him, at the fast receding pair. She raised one objection before she saw The Look.

The Look was something that was the product of a bygone era in Viridian, mostly, so it took her a bit by surprise. In the days before reform, and the ousting of Team Rocket influence over the city, The Look had been a warning sign that legit cops used with one another to stay safe from the chopping block, or syndicate reprisal. If one officer started asking the wrong questions, or prying too deeply, they might find themselves receiving The Look. Simply, The Look meant, "Hey pal. Danger this way. Turn back." Penny hated The Look.

It set off a chain of other questions, too. If she was getting The Look, then certainly that meant this had come down a long ways. The Viridian Police were heavily indebted to the League and many of its subsidiaries, but that shouldn't have meant pulling punches or doing favors. The Law was the Law!

She narrowed her brows, but that Look was still there, coming right back at her, from a man who was rigid as any of the new blood sergeants in the VCPD. He held out his arm, ushering her into his office.

She slumped into a seat, and tried not to look glum, though the matter did concern her more than a little. She new better than to expect him to explain things once he'd closed the door and sat down across from her. She was just a detective, after all, and one that hadn't done much ass-kissing since she'd been promoted, and was therefore not likely to climb much higher.

"I have a job for you, Penny," her Sergeant insisted, gruff as ever.

She crossed her arms, and nodded, still steamed.

"It's an appellate job. Apparently some corporate benefactor refused to provide a criminal lawyer on your clients behalf, and so they've defaulted to a civil defendant. Are you up for that? You told me a few months ago you were interested in getting more into the complete process. This is a good chance for you to expand a little more."

Truthfully, Penny was always eager to give more time to the force. It helped keep her busy, and it also greased the wheels of the system, while doing a generally good thing for the City and for herself. She often spent her weekends volunteering in the radio-dispatch office, or sometimes she helped with the skills classes as she was a certified instructor for almost all of them. She also did a lot of inter-bureau work with the Fire Department, and First Response EMT services as well. She'd passed her bar last year, and expressed an interest for moving into criminal court, but of course they'd blocked her pretty resoundingly from that, once the whole terrorism scare had come up. Nobody wanted a green detective turned criminal lawyer fumbling around when there was work to be done.

Grudgingly, she did accept, but it stuck in her craw that he was trying to throw her this bone in an effort to shut her up. He plopped the case-file in front of her, and shooed her way.

"I'm taking you off of the on-call list. Take it home with you and start reviewing, though. It ought to be a handful." She ought to have recognized her sergeants expression of derisive humor for what it was right then and there. Unfortunately, she didn't realize just what it meant until a short time later, when she plucked through it over lunch with Mark and his son after meeting them at a north-side diner they frequented.

She choked herself to tears with the effort it took to keep from spraying the cola in her mouth all over Mark, who was seated across from her, when she saw the mug-shots of her appointed clients clipped to the allegation listing. A dopey-looking blunette, and a hard-eyed redhead, and their Meowth; three individuals she'd spent a fair deal of time in the interrogation room with only just a few months prior.

When she finally regained herself, after receiving much sympathetic back-patting from Mark Jr., and wiping her stinging nose with a napkin offered by his father, she tried to enjoy the rest of her dinner, excusing the matter as unimportant, and claiming she'd simply suffered a french-fry trying to slide down the wrong tube. "A Handful," however, didn't even begin to describe what this appeals case was going to be.

* * *

"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Casey shouted, hopping up and down and slapping the bannister like a crazy person. Casey really went in for this sort of thing, Misty knew, but it was just hard for her to pick it up. She inspected the diamond with scrutinizing eyes, curious to see what was going on that might be so exciting.

It took forever, it felt like, because she didn't really know what she was looking for, but eventually, as more and more of the players on the field became aware of it and began reacting to it—those in yellow, the visiting Elektabuzz in approval; those in blue, the Tech Typhlosion in surprise—she did see it.

A runner, jersey emblazoned with the name DeMario was trying to steal second base behind the pitcher's back. Misty knew that Corey DeMario was Casey's idol, and so suddenly the especially rampant cheering made sense.

The two of them watched on as the pitcher, alerted to the attempted steal, spun and laid a fastball with some heat on it into the second baseman's glove. It was just a split-second too late, however, as DeMario slid in safe. Casey, naturally, exploded, as did the dugout beneath them.

Casey had been relieved of her bat girl duties for the day in order to spectate upon this exhibition match, and scored them both very nice seats for this game. Not that there was much competition for them. Only a smattering of students from the university were present. and aside from that, a few people here and there were all who'd come to see this out-of-season skirmish.

Annoyingly, in spite of the relative emptiness of the stadium, one person had been seated in the seat right next to the ones Casey had reserved by the time they got here, even though there were plenty of other places to sit. Not that she was anti-social, but it sortof put a damper on her interaction with Casey when every time the girl got up there was this scowling, one-eyed stranger in formal-wear sitting there, saying nothing and responding to the happenings in the game in only a very subdued way.

Misty stood as well, trying not to stare out of the corner of her eye. "I'm gonna go get something from the concession stand, do you want anything?"

Casey rummaged in her pocket for a moment, then came up dry. "Bummer. No scratch."

Misty smiled. "Don't sweat it. My treat. How's a hotdog sound?"

Casey nodded appraisingly. "Not half bad!"

Misty weaved her way around the spectator who'd taken up beside them, and threaded herself down the narrow isle. She felt like she was all knees, cramped between the row of seats and the guard-rail. Sometimes just trying to keep her long legs from getting in the way was more of a chore than it was anything else. Eventually she made her way into the aisle and zipped down the steps two at a time.

There was no line at the concession stand, and she got a frank with relish and ketchup, which was the way she knew Casey liked them, and a bag of popcorn for herself. As an afterthought, she paid for two colas as well, when the attendant began loading so much salt into the popcorn maker that it made her feel thirsty just looking at it.

"Out of twenty, one, two, three and sixty cents is your change," the attendant droned, not moved at all to inform her that they were currently out of cup-holders.

It was no big deal, though. Misty simply tucked one of the drinks into the crux of her elbow, pinched the edge of the popcorn bag between her ring finger and pinky, then gripped the other two items close to herself.

She made the whole return trip without an accident, and actually would have been in the free and clear if Casey hadn't been so excitable. As Misty came beside her to offer the drink and Hotdog, Casey cheered loudly, and threw both hands into the air. She managed to hold onto the popcorn and hotdog okay, and even the cola in her off hand, but the one tucked under her arm popped free.

Both of them fumbled for it in a long tense moment, Casey sweeping in with an outfielder's reflexes to keep it from falling, as Misty shifted with a swimmers grace to get back underneath it. Their combined efforts did not synergize however, and ended with Casey grasping the bottom of the cup, and Misty bumping her elbow, sending the lid and all of the sticky liquid contents pouring out everywhere.

"Sorrysorrysorry!" Casey cried, wincing.

Uranium looked down at her lap with a grimace, the cola-brown stain spreading down both legs in an icy-cold torrent. She sucked in a breath as a gasp and breathed it out again as a snarl, glaring up at the offending hand. Her gaze led her squarely to Casey, who was still clutching the cup with three fingers.

Her pants were wrecked, her nerves were shot, and her temper was boiling hot. She shot up straight, seeing red, mouth already gnashing out insults and vile words that neither of the Kantonese girls could guess at, and threw a wild punch. Fortunately she was so pissed off that the swing went wide, and Casey reared.

When the Unovan girl took a step forward, looking like a Tauros ready to charge, Casey impetuously stood her ground, leaning in to the expected contact from a girl who was almost certainly not as athletic as she was. Uranium, watching the other girls stance, simply obliged by ripping her forward first, with a two-fisted grip of her baseball jersey. The sharp tug disrupted that footing to the point that it was a simple matter to give her the massive shove she had coming.

To Casey, the girl's shove felt like an oncoming tidal-wave, even though she'd leaned into it. It threw her backwards against Misty like she hadn't provided any resistance at all. Still, if the shove had been the unstoppable force, Misty was the immovable object, against which she slumped.

The taller teenager felt like a brick wall, taut and rigid with the sudden threat, hard and solid where she had been soft and wavering.

Misty did not feel quite so certain of herself, though. Instead, she felt the hot flush of adrenaline course into her heart, speeding her pulse, while somehow bestowing a type of warm calmness, like a certainty. A certainty she was ill prepared for, yet her brain kept telling her that this was most certainly going to happen, and she needed to be ready. She had liked the idea of martial combat when it was sport, but the prospect of an actual physical conflict was still an idea that scared her. She supposed, in a way, that was a comforting thought. Like her sisters had chastised, she was not some thug that solved her problems with violence, even though Lily and Violet had caught their respective share of reflexive gut-punches when they pissed her off.

There had been many times in her life and career when she'd come at odds with someone, but never like this. Matching Pokemon head to head was one thing, but it was a damn sight different from throwing a punch at a total stranger. She didn't have any Pokemon, but the prospect of a fist-fight was still tying her guts in knots. At this moment, however, there didn't seem like there could be any other alternative.

Still, nobody was going to shove her friends around and get away with it, This girl might think she was big enough around someone smaller than her, but she was about to get a big surprise

When she stepped around Casey and made to close the distance to this other girl, though, a strange thing happened, and at first, Misty's heart had leapt into her throat. The older girl closed her eyes, sucked in a massive breath of air through her teeth and pushed it out in a long shuddering huff, fists still tightly curled at her sides. To Misty it really looked like some preparatory stance an action-movie hero might assume before dishing out a climactic ass-beating.

Maybe _she_was the one about to get a big surprise. _Now you did it, _her overactive mind berated._This girl is about to lay a down some Kung Fu shit on you. Your one day off, and you're gonna spend it getting beaten to death. Great job._

It stopped her cold in her tracks, and even though it was just for a split second, that was all it took for the situation to resolve itself without altercation.

Uranium brought both hands to her face and rubbed it, trying to relax. She felt a little humiliated when she realized how angry she'd let herself become. That, and she realized with a somewhat greater sobriety, if she didn't fucking cool it, this red-head was going to beat her ass like a dirty rug. Seriously, what was this chick? Six feet? Six feet and some change maybe—lean and lanky but _all fucking muscle_from the look of her.

At five-three and a buck-ten even, Uranium knew she might get in a lucky punch or two, but that would be shortly before she got herself pounded into a flat disc of boneless meat, like some cartoon-character. She'd been in enough fights to know better. If nothing else, losing the use of an eye did at least give you a special sort of foresight when it came to knowing when it was best to back away, hands held high.

Wisely, and with indisputable sincerity, she held up both palms in a nonthreatening display. "I'm sorry," she said. "I, uh..."

Fumbling, Uranium reached out to right Casey, giving a tug on her upper arm to stand her back up straight again. She really wasn't sure what else to say; explaining that she had a shitty temper didn't seem like a very enjoyable or honestly very sensible thing to do, given the circumstances. What was that thing that Kantonese said? Or maybe it was Johtoans that said it...

Oh yeah!

"My bad."

To her disappointment, It didn't seem to have quite the same effect she'd seen it used with before, but still, it did seem to sober the look on that gigantic red-head's face, at least a little, and both of them more or less dismissed their rigidity. Not too many years ago at all, this is where she would've started the brawl, and seized the element of surprise, gouging and biting. In response to that desire, she did feel her anger spike sharply, but she was older, wiser, and had a much better handle on it than she'd once had.

She felt her mouth twitch and decided it was best to leave. She slipped down the aisle and left as quickly as that.

Casey, called after, in what Misty saw as a supreme show of grace: "I'm still really sorry!" but the girl neither turned nor answered. Blinking, Casey turned back to her friend. "What the heck was THAT all about?"

Misty, still following the retreat with her gaze, only scowled. "I dunno."

"I thought for sure she was gonna take my head off."

Misty felt herself deflate a bit. "She sure looked like she was gonna _try_,"

Casey blinked. "Well, thanks for backing me up."

Misty, in return, shrugged. She wasn't really sure how much she'd actually contributed besides just being there. She didn't want to admit cold feet, however, so she nodded. "Don't mention it."

Casey laughed, "If I did, your sisters would probably cry."

The young gym-leader rolled her eyes, knowing that was all too true. She had to remember that her actions reflected not only on her, but on the gym, as well. A big knock-down drag-out fight wouldn't just shame her sisters, it would damage the reputation she'd been trying so hard to build. It shamed her a little to think that she'd let the situation escalate that fast.

She found it hard to enjoy herself after that.

Maybe it was all this "delegation" stuff still getting to her. She sat back down with Casey to watch the remainder of the game, but it was hard to relax with so much on her mind. Still, she needed some time to clear her head, and more importantly, if Parker was right, to get out of everyone's way until they could catch their stride. She knew good and well that days off were supposed to be restful...

So why was it she was spending so much of her time nervous and worrying? It felt almost like she was...forgetting something. Knitting her brow, she tried to forget it, and let herself enjoy the rest of the game.

It didn't work, but she kept smiling every time Casey looked toward her, anyways.

* * *

Misty hadn't felt herself slipping, until she was waking up with a hand print in her cheek and her wrist sore. She'd fallen asleep staring at a book on Water-type care and she'd woken up because she'd remembered something.

"Brth." she mumbled, then shrieked. **"**_Birthday!"_

"Shit! Shitshitshit!" she cursed slapping pockets, her haze of fatigue still thick and bleary. "Gear, gear, wherzzat pokegear!?"

She grabbed it up finally, and without thinking, smashed the buttons she wanted, and put it to her face. It rang twice, like she expected, but this time, unlike the last times she'd tried, someone _did_ pick up.

"Hello?" Ash asked, genuinely curious.

Her mouth failed to form around the word correctly on the first attempt. On the second, she faired a little better on it, managing to tack on the "H"-sound at the end. She'd meant to leave a message, and had expected to have plenty of time to think about it, since Ash's voice mail greeting was insanely long.

By the time it got around to _"...well, okay, so, if you want to leave a message for me, go ahead—oh, and if you want to leave a message for Pikachu, or Bulbasaur, or Snorlax I guess you can—yeah, and Charizard too, right—just leave a message—oh hey, and if this is Mom, I'm doing just fine, and I don't need to be reminded any more to change my you-know-whats, but look, anyways..."_ she was usually irritated enough that she'd already forgotten what it was she'd meant to say, and still had time to sort it back out again before the beep.

Now she felt like an idiot, when the only thing she could manage to get out of her mouth was, "I need you."

"Huh?"

She bit her tongue and shook her head."I need to see you—come see me," she paused, slapped her face and snarled, embarrassment and anger sharply rising. "Do you even know what day it is?!"

Ash looked at his phone, checking the caller ID, before putting it back to his ear. This couldn't be Misty. "It's Saturday."

Deflated, she dropped her hand onto the table. "You _don't _know what day it is," she said bluntly, feeling relieved somehow. Surely her forgetfulness was excusable if Ash couldn't even remember his own Birthday.

Ash, however, was checking the calender on his phone, "It is too Saturday!" he complained, "Why are you calling me just to argue about what day it is?"

Misty, ignoring him, glanced at herself in the mirror, smoothing down her hair, and making sure she didn't look like too big of a slob. Not that if mattered, Ash and her had seen each other in way worse shape, to be honest, so it wasn't as though she really needed to keep a facade in front of him. All the same, she tightened her ponytail a little and adjusted her shirt before making her request. "Ash, put me on videophone."

Her request was granted, and what she saw baffled her to the point that for several very long moments, she lost her ability to speak, entirely. She gesticulated in the air, trying indicate the ideas she wanted to get across, but it was no use. When her voice finally returned, it was hard to keep it below a shriek. "What the hell happened to your hair?!"

Ash blinked, then looked up with slight embarrassment. Some of his hair had grown back in, at least far enough that he didn't look completely bald, but it was still a very close crop. "Hey, don't tell my mom."

Misty's eyes widened at that prospect. Mrs. K would surely blow a gasket. She LOVED Ash's hair. Maybe she didn't care for how he kept it most of the time, but still, if Ash's mom saw him like this, there was no doubt at all it would end in tears. "Sure, but...what happened?"

Ash pulled his lips to the side. "It's sortof a long story." Instead of explaining it, he turned to the side, and indicated the commemorative unit patch they'd all been given.

"PFC KETCHUM, A" it read.

"ECHO SQUADRON

POKEMON CORPS

1ST KANTO TRAINER DIVISION"

All the other patches were similar to his, denoting name and rank, but his was slightly different in that it had golden embroidery on the border around the poke ball and anchor emblem, as opposed to the standard red, and a small placard beneath the Pokemon corps seal read "King of the Hill."

He didn't think he'd be so proud to carry something like this with him, but when Melody had offered to sew it onto the arm of his jacket, he'd gladly accepted. Speaking of Melody... "Hey, guess who I found while I was here!"

He spun to indicate their mutual Orange Islander friend, but strangely, she was gone. He frowned a little. She had been standing right beside him, when Misty had called.

"Who?" Misty asked, sounding a little wary, and evidently rendered a little dumbfounded by the unit patch he'd displayed.

Ash scratched his head. "Uh, well..." He backpedaled, suddenly realizing how much of the story he'd actually have to tell if he began with meeting Melody. "I'll tell you later."

Misty, displeased, but remembering why she'd called, took the opportunity to speak eagerly. "I need you to come by the Gym. I have some stuff for you."

Ash blinked. "Stuff?"

Misty glared powerfully. "Yes, some stuff. Don't ask a bunch of stupid questions, Ash, just get here."

Ash's face furrowed a little more. "What kind of stuff?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would, actually, so..."

"Well, tough. You'll just have to come see it yourself."

The knit brows pulled a little tighter. "I'm kinda busy."

She snorted. "I'll have you know that I've orders from your mother to get this stuff to you, so I don't want to hear it."

Ash scratched his head. "What kind of stuff does my mom want me to have? She already gave me a bunch of stuff when I saw her last."

"Oh, I dunno Ash, maybe the kind of stuff she sends you every year around this time."

Ash, bless his heart, stared off in thought for near a full minute. "...You lost me."

Misty shrugged. "I've got about an hour free tomorrow morning. It'll be really really early, maybe four or five in the morning, but that's the best I can do. Can you make it?"

The old Ash would've balked at the idea of beating the sun up, but now four or five seemed like sleeping in. His shrug evidently surprised Misty, because when he agreed, she looked like she had to swallow an insult she'd been planning on throwing at him. "Sure, if it'll make you happy."

He'd said it more in a way that more implied he'd do it **"**_...If it would get her off his back,"_but the literal interpretation still managed to make her heart skip a beat. In a mixture of anger and embarrassment, she flushed. "A-alright. I'll see you then."

"OK. Bye!" Ash went to go hang up, but then stopped. "Oh hey," he interjected, catching her by surprise. He reached into his jacket, and pulled out the heavy chain and bike-lock still wrapped around his neck "Did you know you forgot this?"

Her shyness evaporated, replaced fully by irritation. "Forgot?! You stole that from me, you idiot!"

* * *

Kazuo paused by the door too the immense testing lab, watching Doc and Holiday have it out with one another by a bank of auto-pipette machines.

"So what's this?" Doc asked, hefting a plastic dish and point at it's thin membranous contents.

"Well, it was a specimen sample I was working on for 72 hours, until you blew your hot ass breath all over it." Holiday replied, taking it from him sharply.

"Oh, well..." Doc mumbled, "What is it _now_, then?

"Trash, mostly." Holiday griped, tossing the petri dish into a bin, and rubbing his nose.

"You've still got like, a million more."

"Sixteen thousand nine-hundred and ninety four."

"That's what I said: _like, a million more_."

"Fuck," Holiday whined, "I **know.**This blows."

"What's all this for, anyways?"

"I've isolated a misfolded prion in the-"

"-without the sciency gibberish, please!"

"...Germs. I found Pokemon germs, okay?"

"Pokemon germs, or germ Pokemon?"

"...You mean to ask if it's a Pokemon germ, or a Pokemon that _is_a germ."

"Sure."

"It's a Pokemon germ. That is, a germ that infects Pokemon."

"What's it like?"

"Okay, well-can I at least be a little sciency?"

"Fine, but just a little."

"So, all pokemon germ connotations aside, this stuff...it's like a virus but it isn't."

"What was that word you used?"

"Prion."

"Yeah, what's a prion?"

"Well, um, Basically a prion is just like, a fucked up protein."

"Isn't protein supposed to be good for you?"

"Except when it it's fucked up."

"Sounds pretty stupid."

Holiday waved off the comment as though it wasn't even audible to him. "Essentially, prion infection is like Reversi."

"Reversi? Okay, that might be too sciency."

"Hold on, I make a board game analogy, and suddenly that blows your mind?"

"Reversi...Oh, yeah! I thought it was like, some weird disease you were talking about. You mean like, that one game, with the little black and white checkers."

"Yeah, the one you always lose at, because you suck."

"I think it's because you cheat."

"-Anyways, so like Reversi: Imagine the little board is filled up with white chips. Then in come just a few little black chips, and bam, all of a sudden you're flipping over chips left and right."

"I don't get it."

Holiday snarled, going back to the drawing board. "Okay, so, prion." He made a claw shaped gesture with his hand. "Fucked up protein, right?"

Doc nodded.

"Prion bumps into this protein that isn't fucked up." With his other hand Holiday made a solid fist, the bumped both his clawed hand and balled fist together, lightly. "At first everything seems normal, but what's this? Uh-oh," Holiday announced theatrically. "Peer pressure! All of a sudden, the regular protein sees, hey, this Prion's got it going _on! _His steeze is hella tight, I'm gonna be just like him." He let his other hand pop open into a claw as well.

"Informative _and _topical."

"So now you got these two prions kickin' it, with their misfolded strands all just hangin out for everybody to see, but they don't give a fuck, and all the other proteins are like, _Daaayum, son. _And pretty soon, everyone wants to be just like them, all loose and confident and shit, because, you know who doesn't like to just cut loose and have a good time?"

"Right on."

"No, fucking, not right on! You know why?"

"Why?!"

"Because prions fucking kill you!"

Doc pretended to gasp.

"Yeah, that's right. All those protiens that used to be holding your nerves and muscles together? Guess what? They got all smug and confident, and fell apart on your ass, when they should have been doing their jobs. You're dead now, because some fucking protiens couldn't just straighten up and fly right!"

"I think I saw this movie in health class. They didn't say fuck as much, though."

"The fuck is what makes it so serious. They should use the word fuck more if they want kids to listen."

"So what are you gonna call it?"

"...Huh?"

"This prion thing. What are you gonna call it?"

"Is Prion Sample 14118 not good enough?"

"Prion sounds kinda lame. It'd be better if you just called it a virus."

"But it's not a virus, it's a prion."

"Yeah, but, like, Viruses are really hip right now. Yanno, like zombie viruses and the Piloswine-flu and stuff."

"Zombies?"

"Yeah, man. Zombies come from viruses, not prions. Everybody knows that."

"Oh. Where are you getting this stuff?"

"Internet," Doc answered with a shrug. "Why don't you just put together two words, like you did for that MissingNo. thing?

"MissingNo.?-Oh, man, come on, don't call it that!"

"Why not?"

"Because that's so lame, for one. I was like, dead tired when I wrote that. Plus, it's like, helly unsubstantiated anyways."

"Who cares? It's catchy!"

"I care! What if that conjecture doesn't even turn out to be close to the mark? Then I look like a total dickface, and I won't have a leg to stand on professionally for the rest of my life. I'll be the guy who thought he'd found the pokemon missing link, but actually just found a hitherto undiscovered pokemon with a bad case of the clap."

"People won't care about that, bro."

"Oh? So they're all about the snazy names, then, I suppose."

"Yeah, like, let's see...Pokemon and...Virus. Poke...PokeVir, no...Poke..."

Kazuo took that moment to step in the room, both because he'd grown tired of the byplay, and because he saw a good opportuntiy to both end it, and seque into what he now wanted from both of them. "Pokerus."

"That's awesome," Doc chirped.

"That sucks!" Holiday snorted.

In complete disregard for the emotions on the matter, Kazuo handed two neatly folded itenerary sheets, and nodded his accord. "Back to Kanto, for the time being."

Ever brazen, Holiday protested hotly, "For what?"

Somewhat more collected, Doc simply muttered to himself. "I just came from there."

Kazuo smiled. "You'll meet with Champion Lance later in the week. Some old business contacts referred him to me for a detail of private consultants. You two. You're going to help him find some individuals linked to the recent 'accident' at Tojuoh Falls. I believe this will lead us straight to whoever is involved with the incident here."

"Who's gonna do all this?"Holiday asked incredulously, indicated the vast stacks of samples.

"The automated machinery." Holiday clearly didn't trust his testing to an automatic process, but that was hardly of any concern to him. The engineer frowned, sticking his nose up at the idea, but Doc perked up.

"What about Ash Ketchum?"

"What about him?"

"Well, I mean, do we keep following him, or..." Doc let his voice trail off. He glanced to Holiday, eyes telling. He'd already spoken about that he'd seen to Holiday, and even though his more skeptical counterpart had shot the theories he'd come up with full of holes, he did catch a glare from the engineer that said none too gently that Doc should stay silent.

Kazuo thought about it for a long time. So long in fact, that it began to concern the two administrators.

"If we continue to shadow Ash, we lose nothing, so long as we are wary. If we fail to do that, we may loose a valuable lead, regardless of what was intended by our as of yet unknown adversaries." Kazuo crossed his arms.

"Report to me when you've arrived."

* * *

Anabel sat facing the window, not willing to open her mouth. She knew that if she did, she would have nothing but condemnation to offer. She didn't want to look at him, either, because she feared that she would find some obvious, sinister quality to him that she could not have possibly been oblivious to, over the years.

She wanted to cry, but she'd already vowed that nobody would be given that satisfaction today.

It surprised her that the first thing she heard, was not an apology. It was probably a good thing, because she wouldn't have believed it, even if it had been.

"I think the world must be very frightening and confusing at times, for you especially," Scott said. "I can't imagine what it's like to stand where you stand, and know the things you know, and have to find a way to live with that. Sometimes the world barely makes sense, and a little insight only makes it all the more confusing." He let out an airy, morose chuckle. "Are we all just monsters to you, Anabel?"

Anabel could feel Scott's eyes on her, as he turned in his seat, but she did not look at him.

"I don't have to tell you that I've thought that about myself a lot, lately. I also don't have to tell you how miserable I am that you got caught up in all these lies we've had to tell. At the same time, I don't think you need to hear just how relieved I am that you're all in one piece."

She cinched her mouth up tight, and felt anger well in her, hot and painful. She didn't want to speak, but the rebuke crawled out of her mouth anyways. "That's not an excuse for what you've done."

"No, it isn't." Scott admitted, blowing out a sigh. "There isn't one I can give you that will mean much."

She ripped from the door and spun on him, angrily. "Then why are you even here wasting your time?"

She felt like her voice was an acid-filled hiss, directed with the intention to burn him. "You're supposed to stick up for me, Scott! Aren't I a Frontier Brain?! You said when I took the job that you would always look out for me!" Scott had never failed her in that until now, and it somehow made it all the more awful to bear. She could tolerate ignorance or indiscretion if she'd actually believed those to be traits Scott possessed, but they weren't. This was outright betrayal, and there was no other explanation.

She felt her voice catch as she went on condemning the man who'd given her everything. "You know that because of h-how I am... things could never have be normal for me." The Frontier had given her a sort of reassuring solitude, and solidarity which she never could have known on her own, and that she had never enjoyed before. All that was now gone. "I thought things would be different in the Frontier, but you just took all that and threw it out the window! You sold me out!"

Scott nodded, holding up his hands. "Anabel, I understand how you must feel."

She cursed herself for the hot tears that cut lines down her cheek, but she was too upset to fight them back any longer. "You don't! You couldn't possibly!"

He grabbed her by both arms, turning her to face him, and while she did struggle a bit, it was a feeble effort. Her agony trumped her strength. She felt ashamed of her own weeping face, and refused to meet his eyes.

"Anabel, this is much larger than you or I. I feel just as overwhelmed and confused as you do, you have to believe that. I know that I've let you down, and that you must feel like you haven't got any friends left. I know that there were promises made to you when I brought you into the Frontier, that I've broken now, and I can't apologize enough for that, but what I really need you to understand, is that we're looking something in the face right now that could destroy everything we've worked so hard to build!"

She grit her teeth. That wasn't anything she didn't already know. "So then you just threw me away, like a pushed pawn? For what? To protect your business? Your dynasty?"

Scott shook his head. "I did what I could to minimize this, but I had no other options! Someone had to take the fall. I'm not saying I'm happy it was you, but the facts are facts! This isn't about just the Frontier, Anabel. Our whole way of life could be at stake! Everything you or I care about could change in the coming year, if we don't take the necessary steps!"

Anabel snorted, seeing not the man but what was inside him. Fear, and nerves bundled tight, and a deep, dark secret that she didn't even need to unravel, to know that it was filled with naught but cowardice, "Necessary steps! Like what?" She made her face cold and impassive as she looked deep within his heart. What she saw filled her with anger and disgust. "Dump all your investments in League Holdings? Move all your assets to an offshore account? Cut all ties?" She said, quoting his inter-most planning back to him, aloud. "Liar. You're a money-grubbing bastard and you know it, Scott!"

Scott's eyes widened, and he reared away. She expected a hot, stinging slap across the mouth, since that's what she'd likely given herself in his shoes, but he did no such thing. "Anabel, you can't tell anyone about that. You'll understand later, I hope, but…"

He put his face in his hands, and blew out a long gust of wind. "Well, maybe it's better for now if you just go on hating my guts," he resigned.

Anabel scooted back to the window, and wiped her face dry with a kerchief. Things were silent again for a time, but then, as Indigo Plateau loomed closer and closer still, Scott once more found his voice. "I am resigning as head of the Battle Frontier. I'm leaving the day to day operation in Brandon's hands. I hope, once I am gone, whatever damage was done to your career will go with me."

Anabel turned to him, expression blank. "So, Brandon will offer me some pardon deal, is that what this is all about?"

Scott looked sympathetic, but shook his head. "I doubt it. Brandon doesn't know about any of this. It was important that as few people know the real story as possible." When she angrily turned to the window again, he went on. "I'm sorry. I've got a lot to do, and very little time to do it, so I can only do for you what I've done so far. It's not going to get things back to the way they were, but maybe I can set things in motion for you, before I leave."

She closed her eyes, unwilling to give the slightest sympathy. "So this is my last gift from you, then?" she accused through grit teeth. "You make me into a patsy, then hawk me off on the league?"

Scott said nothing.

The limo slid to an easy halt, and while she wanted to leap out of it, Scott caught her hand, to hold her steady. "There are interviews taking place today. I want you to take a shot at it."

"Why do you care?" she murmured.

"Because I know I did wrong by you, and I just want to make sure you're looked after. Is that so wrong? Listen, Lance will take care of you, whatever the official statement is. You can trust him."

"I'd rather go it alone." She stated, trying to rip her hand away, but Scott gripped her a little tighter.

"Anabel. Go to the interview. There are more than a few league employees retiring, and their positions need filling."

"Oh, and they'll even accept help someone like me? Someone so inept and negligent that they managed to blow up their own facility? And that's just if they don't know what I really am!" she asked, bitterness coating her tongue

Exasperated, Scott could only explain it plainly. "I'm only trying to make this up to you as best I can."

"No," she seethed, "What you're trying to do is make yourself feel better for being such a pig."

Scott couldn't help his heart from hardening over. He was compassionate, and remorseful, but he was still human. He could only take so much. He let her hand go. "This is the last we'll see of one another, I suppose."

"I hope so."

Scott got out of the car, and then he walked away without another word.

She found herself crying for a long time, as she sat there, grasping the door handle like it was a lifeline. It was only after she'd finally collected herself that she remembered that she was not alone. The compartment window rolled down and William, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, quite annoyingly in contrast to her own feelings, caught her attention. "So, what will it be, Miss? Shall I escort you inside, or take you home? It's your choice."

That didn't leave Anabel with much choice at all.

"What home?" she murmured under her breath.

Just a short clip down Victory Road, Scott watched as his former Brain stepped from the car, and took long reluctant steps up the stone staircase.

"It worked. It wasn't pretty, but it worked." Scott said into his C-gear.

He listened to the voice on the opposite end make him assurances, and ask for his own in kind. "Thank you. I won't let you down. I'm leaving tonight."

He clicked the gear off, then pried it open in the wrong direction, snapping it in half across the hinge. He threw both pieces of it into the hedge. It was time for him to leave. After selling out the person who'd trusted him the most, and putting his vast empire in the hands of another, it didn't bother him so much that he might never return from Unova.

They said that if the PLF got a foothold in the mainland, that life would change drastically for everybody. For him at least, it already had.

* * *

Melody shouldered her backpack, and let her arms hang loosely by the thumbs she'd tucked under the straps. She'd planned on sticking around after all this, kicking around with Ash for at least a little to test the waters. He was a good guy. Sure, he had his issues just like anybody, and sure they made each other stomping mad on occasion, but she certainly could have done a lot worse than Ash Ketchum.

Still, it had all been made rather clear to her the moment he'd picked up the phone. They way his eyes lit up and that smile crept into his expression, when he knew it was her.

She'd thought, at least from what he'd said, that Ash and Misty were no longer an item; that such an idea was no longer even on the table, and never really had been, to hear him tell it. That look, though, that changed everything. The words she'd said, and the brief glimpse she'd gotten of Misty's expression when the video feed kicked on changed it even more.

That was probably the worst part about it, really.

She _really_liked Ash. He was interesting and fun, sweet when you could catch him at it, and he had that rugged, country-boy appeal that really got her motor running. Ash Ketchum's only flaw, really, if you could call it that, was that, whether he knew it or not, he still had something going on with Misty Waterflower, and Misty _really_still had something going on with him.

Still, had she been cut from a different cloth, Melody could probably just push herself into it all, vie hard for Ash's attentions, and the odds were good that she would come out on top, unless things had changed drastically since she'd seen Misty last. The water-trainer's own inhibitions and frustrations about Ash would always get in the way of their relationship, if she didn't let them go. Misty's problem, deep down, was that she wanted Ash to come to her on bended knee, and she'd be damned if she admitted her feelings until then. It didn't take much insight at all to see that Misty had very long streak that was equal parts stubbornness and pride.

Melody had no such hang-ups. She knew good and well that Ash would never come out and take what he wanted romantically. He wasn't that kind of guy, and he was oblivious besides, so Misty could just keep on dreaming, in that regard. He was never going to see someone who stood on the sidelines waiting to be noticed for what they were. Misty had real substance to her, and honestly, truer affection for Ash than anyone, probably, however much she wanted to hide it. That wasn't going to mean squat if someone really took a swing at Ash, though. Unlike Misty, she wouldn't have let her sense of entitlement stand between her and a good thing.

She didn't think anyone would have cause to call her an outright slut, but she wasn't shy, either. There was a time for a girl to stand on principle and ceremony, but there was a time for a girl to use her charms, wits and _body_too, if need be. Melody knew that if she wanted to, if she really, really wanted to, she could have been making out with Ash by tomorrow at the very latest and more, _much_more, if she wanted that too.

Instead, she was getting ready to board the ferry back home. She smiled with only a little bitterness at her own reflection in the murky waters off the wharf, and mounted the first step of the gangway.

Orange Islanders might not've been the toughest, or the bravest, but one thing always held true about them. Orange islanders had a long history of standing by the things they said.

When the free men of Johto had made rebellion against the Kantonese Empire of old, centuries ago, the Orange Islanders had not come to their aid. In spite of the fact that the Orange Island tribal leaders sympathized with the Johton cause, the fact remained that they'd sworn allegiance to the Empire, and so those leaders sent their longboats out in suppression of the coastal raiders fortified in what was now Olivine City.

Of course, in even in contemporary history it was thought that the alliance with Kanto had been made in, and upheld out of fear, and the token effort of longboats had mostly been an effort to provide leverage against higher taxation from the mainland. Not that it mattered, since the longboats had all been smashed by a winter squall near the Sevii islands before they even reached their destination.

Still, the fact remained that Orange Islanders stood by their word. Just like any other people, they were diverse, and full of all types for better or worse, but as a collective culture, Orange Islanders did what they said they'd do, no matter how modestly.

Her, Glen and Terry had all set out from Shamuti, having told the Civic Council that they would try their hands at being Corpsmen. She had been the only one to succeed, yes, but the important thing was they had all tried, just as they'd agreed to.

A long time ago, she'd made another promise—to herself, mostly, because there would have been no chance of getting Misty to outright admit to it long enough to make it official—that she'd keep her hands off Ash so long as Misty could still make an open play for him.

Ash was not the only mainlander who'd given her cause to respect them on that day, years ago. When Misty had thrown herself into those churning waters that not even her, born in the islands, had been eager to brave, to save her "friend who was also a boy, but not her boyfriend," she'd known right then that it wasn't just Ash who was the real deal.

They said that Pidgey of a feather tended to flock together after all, and whether or not those two wanted to come right out and admit it, they were certainly two of a kind. They'd both changed a bit, since back then, she guessed, but who didn't?

She stepped off the mainland and onto the deck, and the gravity of it all hit her at once. She still felt a little disheartened by what she was leaving behind, but there was a certain feeling of true relief as well. It was over. There had been a small celebration and ceremony which the LT had thankfully kept brief, but it was finally, completely over, and she'd survived. She sighed one last time, and shook her shoulders around to ease her feelings of sadness.

It had almost worked, but someone yelled at her before relief set in.

"Melody!"

Her hair-trigger Pokemon Corps reflexes had her spinning in place and standing taut and rigid before she even realized what was going on. Down below, stood Ash Ketchum, tall and proud, waving his arm wildly to catch her attention.

She waved back, feeling a blush rise to her face. They'd already drawn up the gangplank, so there he was stuck on the wharf.

"Why did you leave without saying goodbye?" he hollered, cupping his hands around his mouth to project his voice.

Melody, in return, yelled down to him "Because I hate goodbyes!"

She could hear his laugh, even from this distance. "Then we wont say goodbye!"

Pikachu voiced his concurrence loudly "Piipikachuuuuu!"

"You're saying it right now!" she countered.

"Well, I sorta hoped I'd have more time!"

It was Melody's turn to laugh. "Tough luck, Ketchum. A good opportunity doesn't wait around forever!" She made sure her tone was mostly joking, but Ash still seemed a little embarrassed.

"I'm really sorry!"

She didn't know whether to be shamed or irritated by the honesty in his voice. "It's okay!" She yelled back. "Really!" She left out the next thought that went through her head, since it was about Misty, and she knew well enough already that neither of those two dolts would take advice about the other. Instead, she threw out congratulations "How does it feel to be a corpsman!?"

"Way better than it felt to be a corpsman recruit!"

They both shared in that laugh.

"Good luck on your journey, Ash!" Melody said at last, as the ferry blew it's horn and dropped it's mooring lines. "I know you'll knock 'em dead this year!"

"Thanks!" Ash shouted back "Hey, and you too! Good luck with... well, whatever you decide on! You and your Pokemon are a lot tougher than you think! I know you guys can do anything!"

"Oh yeah?" she asked, not nearly as surprised with him saying so, as how true she found it to be. Her and her Pokemon had weathered a lot, pushed their boundaries and surpassed expectations at every turn. She'd gained a lot of confidence in herself, and perhaps even more in her Pokemon.

"I wouldn't have made it through this without you helping me!" Ash concluded. "Even if the help you gave wasn't always so nice!"

"The same goes for me!"

Ash pretended to bristle, putting both hands on his hips "I don't ever remember not being nice!"

"You wouldn't!"

"What?!"

"I said: YOU WOULDN'T!"

The boat was creeping further and further away from the dock, now, and it was becoming harder and harder to be heard, but Ash nodded regardless, either out of understanding or plain acceptance of the fact that he couldn't hear a damn thing she was saying.

She waved, and he waved, but true to their word, neither said a final goodbye.

As Ash and Pikachu faded into the distance, Melody tried to ease the lingering soreness she felt in her heart. Cupping her hands, she looked down into her palms. "A drop of water that slipped through my fingers," she commented philosophically.

Coming back around, with a spin and a whoop, Melody slapped the patch on her arm and strode hard for her cabin below deck. She was a Corpswoman now.

In just another year, she would be too grown up to be the Shrine Maiden anymore, and a whole new world would open up before her, challenging her to find a place in it. Before, that had worried her, but not anymore. Ash was right.

She could do anything she wanted!

Back on the docks, Ash turned to his partner, who looked back with a shared look of serenity and satisfaction. Ash, though, shortly frowned and looked away when his hand brushed an item on his belt. The ball Surge had given him. He looked back to Pikachu and this time, they shared a smirk.

With a click and a snap, the ball popped open and twisted apart in the harsh gloved grip of the young trainer who was once a corpsman recruit, now an aspiring champion bound for success. With a promise, he dropped both sparking halves of the ball over the railing.

"Done, and done!" he said with a whoop of his own, and then they were on their way.

* * *

A/N: If you don't know what Reversi is, you may have also heard it called Othello, which was what was called in my house growing up. Reversi is apparently the more common name for it, however, so that's the name I went with.

Alright so, face-front, I don't know when in the hell I can have the next chapter done by. I really hope it doesn't take as long as the last one, but my work situation has been very difficult as of late, and I don't see it improving before June.

Lots of cool stuff coming in the next chapter, though. Sabrina, Roxie, and Ritchie, for starters. We'll see where It goes from there.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Until next time!


	21. Chapter XXI

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Pokemon.

**Chapter Summary:** Ritchie and Uranium work new angles, and revisit old ones. Deliah's facade slips, but will it disrupt all that she's silently suffered to preserve? Ghetsis offers advice to a young boy and his Onix, while Ash's next badge acquisition gets off to a shaky start. Will he trip over the starting line again, or has he grown some?

**A/N:** Welp, I did say I wasn't sure how long this would take, didn't I? I'm about fifty percent done with the core material that will become the next two chapters, but there's much madness going on in my life right now, so its pretty hard telling what that means as far as time-line. I was intending to cut the material up differently, and release it as two larger chapters, as opposed to three but I probably ought to stick to something closer to my projected 20k word chapters if I want to be updating this thing any more frequently than biannually. I figure that it's probably about time that I posted something at least.

I'm pretty sure I've covered with the whole M rating thing, but I'm gonna go pretty hard over these next few with the adult subject matter. This chapter will be the cleanest of the bunch, I think, so nothing immediate, but just so that we're clear. Thanks for reading, as always! I hope to be writing another one of these goofy-sounding author's notes before Christmas, so here's to hoping, right?

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XXI**

"Get Back"

Jaws dropped when she walked through the creme-colored double doors of the Pokemon Tech Appeals Club; each of the reactions overblown, and obvious.

It was true that Uranium was a stark contrast to her environment, but here was no good reason for their surprise, really, since she'd been here before, and a good half of them had to have known she was coming anyways. It was all part of the charade, she knew.

She'd stormed straight here from the baseball diamond, and she had no patience left, so she just let it play out as it would. It wasn't for her sake anyhow. She knew good and well what they'd done, but if they all pretended not to know and be affronted by her indelicacy and anger then it would just make them seem all the more innocent.

"Its okay," Giselle soothed as several trainers lining the long sides of the conference table scrambled to the top. "She asked me to come here."

She almost laughed, since what she'd done was _tell_ Giselle she was coming with no regard at all for whether or not she was invited. Of course, nearly all of the appeals club's sixty members were here, either lining the wall, sitting at the table or gawking through the windows into the long meeting hall, so Giselle was obviously the more prepared of the two of them. The fact that Giselle obviously expected her to start a free-for all, did please her a bit.

Uranium hadn't come here to start a fight she had no hope of winning, though. Maybe if you had asked her a few hours ago, she would've said otherwise, and still, a big part of her did want to mount the table and snatch Giselle bald-headed like the bitch deserved...

She'd gotten a text message in the middle of the night, one week ago, from her Academic Guidance counselor, saying that her dormitory had been broken into. She'd climbed out of bed and flown home from South Mandarin on the spot. When she'd finally made back from the islands however, there had been a disaster waiting for her. The blow-for-blow feud had finally gone too far for Giselle and her following to stand, with the defeat of Ash Ketchum, their unwilling would-be champion. Her departure to the Elite Four training camp had been too ripe an opening to resist, apparently.

They'd wrecked everything, and she did mean _everything_.

Someone had evidently busted the lock to her room and turned their pokemon loose in it with abandon. Every stitch of clothing, every stick of furniture, every belonging she possessed that hadn't been on her during her trip was totally destroyed. If it wasn't torn to ribbons, smashed to bits, or burned to a crisp, it was soaked, or still frozen in solid hunks of ice, melting in rivulets down into the carpet. She carried most of what was important to her around on her back like any good trainer, of course, but there had still been an irreparable sanctity violated when she'd found her poster of Champion Lance, everything above the magnanimous smile charred to a flaky, black scraps on the floor.

The battling club was in much the same state, someone having busted out one of the upstairs windows then unlocked the doors from the inside. What little training equipment that the old members had deigned leave behind after jumping ship to the Appeals Club had been either wrecked or dismantled, and the entire battling floor had received much the same treatment as her dormitory. That was especially impressive, since the battling floor was designed to take that sort of punishment regularly. A hole that she was pretty sure had been put there by a high-intensity Hyperbeam still gaped in the roof, with a weeks worth of weather damage on the floor, to stand testament.

She'd left it that way. She wasn't about to clean up after Giselle or her goons.

Still, that club had been hers, and just thinking about it made her blood simmer. So, yeah, if she really wanted to-really, _really _wanted to-it wouldn't have been hard to validate leaping across there with a surprise left that would smash that stupid grin off Giselle's perfect little face.

But it wasn't worth what it was going to cost her, in the end. She knew something Giselle didn't.

Her release hearing all those years ago had come with an ugly little caveat, after all, it would brook no more mistakes on her part. The juvenile court arbitrator had long since tired of seeing her face, and the fact that she'd gotten out early for good behavior on a training charter had stuck in the man's craw, that much was obvious.

"_A release is hereby granted by this court, with the juvenile record to be closed thirty days prior to the release applicants 18th birthday, pending eighty-four months without further misconduct. However, If this court, or any court should again find you accused of a violent crime, it will advocate conviction with all possible penalties and due prejudice,"_ the verdict had rang out, followed by the loud smack of the gavel. At the time, all she'd wanted to hear was the part about being released to start her journey, but the reality of it had been explained to her later by her corrections officer.

"_If you get in trouble again, they're going to have you tried as an adult. That means you go in the pen, not into this little cupcake day-care you've been staying at whenever you get into trouble now. Not only that, but they're basically saying that they'll convict you on the spot, and to the fullest extent possible without even regarding the evidence."_

"_Can they do that?"_

"_To a first or second time offender, no. To you? Odds are they could do just about anything short of lethal injection at this point. Plus, Judge Hastings really doesn't like you."_

She'd almost reminded him that it all stemmed from the fifth time she'd gotten in trouble for fighting, and she'd tried to represent herself. Hastings had dismissed her from the defense chair after she'd used some fairly coarse language to refer to the aggrieved. It hadn't seemed all that great of a comeback, though, once she'd thought about it. Actually, now that she _really_ thought about it, that death penalty quip had been a pretty black-humored thing to say to an 11 year-old girl.

Either way, that was the Mankey on her back. She had to take this one lying down, or they'd ship her ass straight back to Unova, and that would be the anticlimactic end to her pokemon training career. She sighed miserably. If only there were some way to arrange for Giselle to get the piss beaten out of her, without getting her own hands dirty...

"_What did you expect would happen?"_ her own inner voice, colored with the relaxed intonations of her old anger therapist echoed in her head, as it often did when Uranium knew she needed to be told something aggravating true. _"You came in and turned their lives upside down, why shouldn't they do the same to you?"_

She'd always sort of hated that laconic quality of the woman, really, so it was ironic that she so often used it on herself. Why _did_ therapists have to explain everything like it was all so simple and straightfoward? Just because it usually had been from a literal standpoint, hadn't made it any easier to stomach. Therapy had never really made her feel less angry, she realized now that she thought about it, just more able to deal with it.

Maybe, she considered, the therapy had never really been intended for her own personal benefit, but rather for the benefit of those around her. That was damned unfortunate, because it really did seem as though Giselle was getting the bigger end of the stick at the moment. Still, she did have one trump card left to play.

She sat down quietly, trying in vain to keep the front of her jacket down while she did, as though it were the hem of an abbreviated skirt. The large and still uncomfortably damp cola-stain on her slacks was still in full evidence, as sadly this was the extent of the formal-wear she owned, so she couldn't very well change out of it.

Circumstances dictated she dress in something other than the ratty hoodie and ripped-knee jeans she frequented today. What she was wearing probably didn't cut the mustard as a true formal ensemble, since it was the same thrift-shop suit that the state authority had put together for her when she'd gone to her release hearing; out of style and worn out before she'd ever come to own it, and having spent almost six years rolled up in a travel-trunk, at that.

"You look like you spilled something on your pants, sweetheart," someone noted immediately, and far from helpfully.

_Gee, you think?_

"Maybe you should just throw them out, already. I know black is supposed to be back in this year, but those look like they belong in a black and white photo."

Uranium only rolled her eye. It wouldn't have done any good to say that she wasn't wearing it to impress anyone here present. Instead she let it roll off her back.

"You do realize that neckties are typically worn by men, right? Why don't you try a nice cocktail dress, next time?" Another of Giselle's too-pretty cronies suggested behind a false smile.

_Bitch, if only you knew why. _

Uranium might've been impulsive deep down, but she knew what two full sleeves of visible tattoos would do to your professional credibility in very short order. Some secrets were best not coming to light too soon. Maybe it was time to put it all out there on the table, so far as this place was concerned, though.

"I'm leaving Pokemon Tech."

Giselle, brilliant actress that she pretended to be, gasped far too hard and too suddenly for the reaction to be genuine. "Dropping out? What for?"

She could've said anything, really. That she didn't belong, for one. That she was bored to tears with the curriculum, for another. What she couldn't say was that it was because Giselle didn't know when to quit, and had made life at the school insufferable. Well, she could've, she supposed, but she wasn't about to give Giselle any indication that she'd gotten to her on a personal level.

...Still, it was only fair that she got in her own parting reprisal, right? Maybe not the sort she would've liked, with her knuckles slamming into Giselle's perfect little smile and busting it all to hell, but she could make do.

"There's an opening in the elite four. I'm going to fill it." The statement was mostly bravado. The message she'd received via email from the champ had been more a chance to interview than an outright job offer, she was sure, and the message had said nothing specifically about an elite four position, but rather referred to several nebulous positions within the League hierarchy that needed filling. Giselle didn't need to know that, though.

Everybody knew that she'd been invited to the Elite Four training camp. Everybody knew her reputation. It was time that it garnered her the respect she deserved. Giselle didn't betray much, but even just the brief moment of true jealousy in her expression, and the half-second of stunned, slack-jawed silence was pure bliss.

Giselle's followup, if anything, was all the sweeter. Gathering herself, Giselle plastered that smile back on before delivering what she believed to be the closing thrust. "I would be happy to accept the Battling Club-"

Uranium could hardly contain herself, or her grin as she sprang upward so fast that the folding chair they'd readied for her alongside their own plush leather appointments to demean her went skittering away. "I just bet that you would!"

"The fact remains, however, that It's me who gets to decide who takes over the club after I leave, not you."

She bared her teeth and gums in a smile that was more a show of natural weaponry than gesture of mirth, and slapped both hands to the table. Some of the other coordinators were clambering to stand up again but she was already in motion, hurling the object of discussion with a mixture of fierceness and dark amusement.

The keys to the Battling Club Complex hit the table with a cacophonous sound, and skidded across the polished surface to fall into the lap of her chosen successor. Uranium didn't bother to say anymore. She only turned and departed, kicking the aluminum chair out of her way and giving the double doors similar treatment, leaving Joe baffled. The Appeals Club flew into chaos as she left it, and that satisfied her well enough.

She'd have liked it if her passage had been just that simple, but annoyingly, Joe came out after her as she was preparing to take off on Braviary for Indigo Plateau.

"I don't understand!" he complained.

"Yeah, well, life is just full of mysteries, Joe. Get used to it," she offered sardonically, tucking a ball back onto her hip.

"I mean, why me?" he demanded, voice full of tension and bewilderment. "How does that change anything?"

She paused, and offered a noncommittal shrug. "It doesn't really."

Joe blinked as she mounted the broad-winged bird pokemon, "T-then why?"

Uranium glared. She still really, really hated seeing the good in people, at times. Joe, as far as he was stuffed up Giselle's butt, couldn't have possibly known about her plot to trash her dorm or the Battling Club, she could see that in his expression. Still, she figured it was best to tell the plain truth.

"I don't want you to get the idea that I like you, because that's about as far from the truth as things could get. I don't like you, and I don't like what you do even more so. I'm doing this because out of all the people in this school, you were the only one who stood up and challenged me head on, after I became the battling club rep. Giselle, all the people she convinced and manipulated into doing her dirty work, all her coordinator cronies...only you had the guts to face me out in the open. In spite of everything else, I can actually respect that about you," she said openly.

"It didn't count for anything. I didn't beat you. I lost."

She could've explained that it didn't matter, that what really counted was getting your licks in while you could, making moves for the outcome you wanted with everything you had, even if-especially if-it wouldn't mean anything to anyone else, but she really didn't feel like giving life lessons to someone who'd openly stood as her enemy, and been the best of several bad options when it came to choosing a successor.

When Joe only gaped, she shrugged and lightly nudged Braviary with her heels. Her pokemon unfurled its total wingspan, beating the air in a few preparatory motions. "If you give the club back to Giselle, that's your business. I don't care anymore. I just had to find a way to be good with the way things turned out on my end," she said in parting, as the shifting sensation of lift gripped her stomach.

She tucked herself low to Braviary's profile as the massive bird took to the skies, lifting her briskly away from Pokemon Tech, a place where, if she had the slightest bit of common sense at all, she'd steer well clear of from now on.

She knew when she was beat.

* * *

Ritchie still felt a little like he was a ghost. Something about how he'd left the islands had filled him with a new, and all-inclusive sense of confusion. He didn't understand why he was holding yet another letter of invitation in his hands, he didn't understand girls, and he was beginning to feel like he didn't really understand the world in general.

The League Headquarters at Indigo Plateau was the largest and foremost battling complex of it's type. Here was the place where the best and brightest assembled _under_ the very best and the very brightest. Here was where all the power and influence in the battling world laid it's head and made it's home. Here was where bright marble columns and capitals held up the figures of men who might as well have been gods. Battlers who's names and faces cast long shadows down the annals of history had clashed here.

So, it felt a little odd to be here, such as he was, invitation in hand, standing in what seemed to be a mighty exclusive club, from the looks of things. People who'd walked away with tournament victories and who's faces he recognize milled in the glass-fronted foyer, sharply dressed and smartly appointed. Jon Dickson, Tyson, and several others who'd made big waves regionally. Auspicious leaders from private gyms as far away as Hoenn, noteworthy trainers from all over the mainland.

Was this really the crowd he'd put himself in?

He'd done well in the Silver Conference. Really well, in fact. Better than he'd imagined he would, at any rate.

He'd never been the type to sell himself short, but the top two placement hadn't really felt like permission to consider himself firmly planted in the upper crust of battling society. His showing during the semifinals hadn't even been a breakout performance all things considered. He'd come up against a strong trainer, whittled him and his pokemon down bit by bit, and eventually won out. It hadn't been titanic clash of trainers who were larger than life; just a competition between two battlers there to compete with their all. He'd lost badly in the finals anyways, so the whole thing was sharply remembered through a filter of incertitude.

He'd known good and well that Lance's invitation to Mandarin had only been a favor for Silver, who'd set it all in place for him, anyways. He hadn't really felt flattered or overwhelmed with the situation, as he'd stepped onto the field with the Champion and his Elites-at least not in the way someone else there had-but that was because it had all seemed more like a contest he'd won, a lucky thing that had happened simply by astronomical chance. Nobody but the best of the best got to do what he'd been allowed to. Uranium had gotten there on achievement, if the tales told were true, but it had been a special exception his case, a one-in-a-million lottery ticket which had entitled him to it, in the form of a friend with league contacts.

This was different. He knew it shouldn't have instilled so much doubt in him; made him feel like he was out of place the way that it did, but he just had to wonder...

Was he really standing here because of what he'd done, or was it because of who he knew? Lance would've looked right over him when he was hunting for up-and-coming battlers to train with, if Silver hadn't dropped his name, that Ritchie did not doubt. Really, though, how big was the gap between him and all these people? Did the gap even matter? Did it even exist, or were all these people also here because they networked well with the right people, too? Didn't he deserve to be here, even if that wasn't the case? Why did he have to feel so mixed up about it?

He really didn't know. Maybe it was just cold feet. All he knew for sure was that he felt very strange in a tie. He'd never owned a suit before and it had taken all day to get properly measured for one. That, and it had taken pretty much all of the cash he'd had to pay for the damn thing. He could never wear this in anything like a normal setting. It was much too restricting and uncomfortable to train pokemon in even the most temperate climates, much less on the tropical southern islands. Yards and yards of gray chalk-line wool might've made a person look pretty professional, but it sure as hell didn't make them any better of a trainer-so he was at least equal to everyone in the room in that respect. Well, except for Jeanette Fisher, who was in this slinky black number he had to keep remembering to looking away from.

Speaking of things he had to remember to look away from, that got back to another subject he'd just now been coming to terms with, that being the massive Donphan in the room, and person he'd been pretending not to notice in a much more overt way than he was pretending not to notice Jeanette's cleavage, for some time now. He'd been there for a few hours already before Uranium showed. She must've thought she was terribly slick, leaning against the ionic column closest to the entryway, with her I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anything-in-this-room expression on, but the longer Ritchie felt himself standing there unable to turn his head beyond the forty-degree mark, the madder he got.

_Well, go talk to her!_

He wasn't sure when the gasket had suddenly blown, but before he'd had the good sense to stop himself, that tiny little voice was already spurring him in motion, sweeping aside one or two people who'd blocked his path with little more than an "excuse me." She caught sight of him, faked surprise, which was obvious from the way she oversold it, then, oddly, looked him up and down.

He felt like he skidded to a halt in front of her, all the self-righteous indignation grinding to a dead stop when he finally faced off with her. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but it felt like he was trying to talk around a fist-sized wad of gum. He stammered uselessly while her look went from appraising to evaluating to something that Ritchie wasn't quite sure he felt comfortable about: Hungry. He'd seen that look before, or at least some mockery of it.

With a mixture of discomfort and frustration, he pointed into her face. A low whisper coming out in place of vengeful hollering, given the close proximity they shared with the other occupants, but his own embarrassment glowed hot. "What are you doing here?"

"Same thing you are," She smirked and tweaked his finger, bending it in that same _just-a-little-too-hard-but-not-quite-hard-enough_ way she had on that night a week ago he was still trying to place in his memory between _Traumatizing_ and _Formative._

Trolling for suckers seemed more like what she was doing, if his past experience was anything to go on. He jerked his hand back, and shook the sting out of his digit, with a frown. He wanted to retort angrily, but a tiny little voice cut in, then and stole his bluster.

_Damnit, Ritchie, what are you doing? Play it cool, man. This is not how you're supposed to act. _

That voice must've been something like his conscience, he supposed, but really it was an inner voice that had only started talking in just the last few years. And it never seemed to be telling him the difference between right and wrong. In fact, just recently, it had sortof done the opposite.

So, either he'd developed an advanced form of schizophrenia since hitting puberty, or this was his dick talking. Which made sense, considering this little voice didn't seem to give a rattata's ass about whether or not Uranium had ditched him, or what the circumstances were about her sudden return, or any of that. Instead, it seemed to be centering in on that devious expression, and looping through the events that had transpired the last time he'd seen it, on instant mental playback.

The natural thing to do, he supposed, would have been to ignore this stupid little voice, and carry on as he'd intended. But then again, he remembered some of the things that had happened that night too, and both he and that voice were not against seeing them happen again. His frustrations softened into agreement, and those too melted away into a warm sensation that numbed even his harshest grievance.

A bit zombified by the feeling, Ritchie leaned back a bit, and thrust both hands into his pockets. "No, I meant like, _after._.." In a suggestive show that Ritchie would've smacked himself for in any other moment than this, he popped both eyebrows to load the innuendo.

She rolled an eye at him, but that grin came out in full force. "Why wait till after?"

_Aw yeah. Smooth, Ritchie. Very smooth, my man._

Uranium's slight crook of the neck and growing smile cemented it. Whatever this voice was, he would follow it anywhere.

* * *

There were no more leaders left in the world. No more rulers. No more power, really, save that which belonged to Pokemon.

Since mankind had first learned to harness the incredible power of these creatures, their conflicts and conquests were owed to them alone. Human power-structure was built on the backs of pokemon, and remained so to this day. Pokemon-comprised armies had swept across the world in times of antiquity so that today Power Companies could harvest electricity from Electric pokemon, and sell it billions of dollars in profit for themselves.

An entire industry, culture and way of life was built around the capture, captivity and control of a kingdom of organism that was every bit as collectively entitled to live peacefully and without interference from others as any human. Ghetsis knew this. It was a hard truth in this world that had become so hell-bent on dominating this supposedly lesser species and excusing it as companionship and friendship, but it was a plain truth.

Every year, children by the thousands poured out of cities and towns into the wild, a new generation of "trainers" to further distort the continued perception of this travesty, to continue the work of their predecessors and keep the foundations of this disgusting, perverse society from crumbling.

He'd done so much work in his life, given so much to the cause of separatism, that at times he felt hollow, and still the columns that held the likes of Charles Goodshow and his faithful following stood firm. He'd broken himself on the rocks of society many years hence. The loss of his son had been a great and terrible sacrifice to make, and in the end it had proven fruitless.

They had only swept it beneath the table, like so much else, to keep their ship afloat. They'd swept Tojou under the rug as well, masterfully, it was true. But things would soon pile too high for even their slick-talking like to dismiss so easily. The PLF was untouchable, so long as it presented no target to strike at, and they could bide forever if need be, while the League suffered nicks and pinpricks against them.

And even still, Ein's great work would eventually be done; the truly damning weapon with which he would strike a fatal blow. The setbacks he'd faced still tasked him greatly, but in the end, the League and everyone in it would be broken, by that, at least. Broken in the same way that he'd been broken, and beyond.

"Sire." a tall, cold figure to his left addressed, breaking his train of thought. He glanced aside.

The two remaining shadows were men, at least in some sense of the word. What they were other than that, he could hardly guess. Much like the black, occult rituals that had made them into what they were, there were no true names for them, and they had never been given any. Not until one of them had broken away, and taken up the mantle of a traitorous dog named Kazuo, had they ever been anything but lurkers in the shadow, nameless as they were formless, enigmatic as they were deadly.

It had shaken his faith somewhat in those three, to be betrayed so openly, but that was in the past. Kazuo had simply mistaken loyalty for the memory of his son, N, as greater than his loyalty to the father. The other two would not make that mistake; each had vowed to kill the other, if they strayed down the same path as their brother.

"Yes?" he answered at last, regaining himself from miserable recollection.

"The crew has nearly completed their task. Shall I inform them you will be returning aboard?"

Ghetsis sighed. "No, not yet."

For all the comforts the Explorer One offered, fresh air and blue skies were not among them. "Just a bit longer."

The two didn't argue. They never did.

So for now, he would enjoy it as the sky overhead yawned wide with the deep colors of summer blue. The weather was almost uncomfortably hot in comparison to the nuclear-powered air-conditioning offered by Explorer One. He could almost forget where he was, and imagine himself back in his homeland, a place he rarely showed his face anymore, if he looked straight out to sea and ignored the foreign skyline behind him.

Well, he almost could, anyways. The two junior trainers battling out on the pier were an unwanted distraction, flaunting their vulgarity for all to see. He sighed and reclined on the park-bench, decided to simply look at the horizon, and distant skies of the sea.

That was, at least until one of his protective shadows caught the line of his sight. "Shall we remove them, sire?"

"No." The battle was already drawing to a close, so there was really no need for a show of force. In fact, as it ended, the losing trainer walked dejectedly down the pier towards them.

Ghetsis, once his shadows vanished, must've seemed a very innocuous presence to these foreigners, much as a Galvantula's web must've seemed harmless at first, to many errant bug-types, so it was really no surprise that the boy and his Raltz came to sit next to him on the park bench. It was a very wide bench, and he only just took up the end of it. Once he'd commanded a very imposing presence, but he'd long since given up the robes and regal finery and he was ostensibly a very slight, even if tall old man without them, so why shouldn't the boy sit down beside him?

Max rubbed his face, and tried to stay focused, even though all he really felt like doing was giving up. "This doesn't make any sense," he muttered to himself, while he bounced his knees anxiously. He should've wiped the floor with that trainer. A Poliwag and a Luxio should have been short work for his pokemon, but Raltz just couldn't take down both, and Onix had again balked from giving him any help at all.

It had been over a week since his battle with Bugsy, and things had not improved so far as Onix was concerned. On the contrary, they seemed to be growing worse. Before, Onix had only ignored Max's commands, but now Onix would often behave so objectionably that Max would often have no choice but to withdraw the rock-serpent from battle, in order to avoid collateral damage or bodily harm.

"Something troubling you?"

Max looked up, noticing his seated companion for the first time. He didn't really know what to say, at first, and so only shrugged. His parents had taught him not to talk to strangers, just the same as anyone's parents might've he supposed, but this old guy didn't seem like he could do any real harm. Max didn't want to seem rude, so he answered.

"I'm uh, having trouble with my training, is all."

Though he hadn't expressly meant it to be a brush-off, Max didn't really mean to hold a proper conversation. It shortly turned into one, however.

"Onix doesn't seem to like you much," the man said, with uninvited frankness.

Max bristled at first, but then settled. It was true, however sharp the point might've been, and he didn't really have the right to deny it. The sad part was that Onix seemed to hate him more and more as things went on.

"I thought that I'd come to an agreement with Onix but it doesn't seem like he thought the same about me."

The old man arched a thick gray brow at him, his lips pursing with condescension. "_He?"_

Max blinked at the sudden question "M-my Onix, I mean."

The other brow rose to meet it's partner. "This is the same Onix you were just battling with I assume?"

Max nodded, a bit stupefied, but then his eyes flew wide at the man's sudden scoff. "It's no wonder your training isn't going well, then."

He felt anger roiling in him, and turned to express it, until the old man pulled the rug out from under him by pointing out his own ignorance. "Your Onix is female."

Max shrank back into his seat. "Oh."

A very long, very uncomfortable silence started, then, giving Max plenty of time to wrack his brain to the point of utter bafflement. It happened in just a way that he was completely, almost desperately receptive when Ghetsis spoke next. That was the point after all. Ghetsis had sown his rhetoric in this way many times before.

"Let me offer you some advice..."

* * *

Neither had been called over the PA system and he supposed that was a good thing, since she'd dragged him out of the waiting room, with promises that she'd make up for ditching him in the islands and he was in no position to object to an apology like that.

She was vacuum and gravity and magnets, and he didn't know or care how to get free of the pull. The inside of her mouth was hot and wet and thrilling, and she kissed and licked and sucked at him like she never wanted to forget the taste. He shrugged off the jacket as she worked her way down his arm, leaving swollen pink blemishes in her wake.

Ritchie's off hand grappled with the door to the supply closet, desperate to find a locking mechanism that didn't exist, while she swallowed the middle two fingers of the other clear to the second knuckle. Ritchie felt her coax him to probe deeper until their tips passed the weft of tongue and flirted with the fleshy slick of throat, but she neither recoiled nor choked. She just held there, clutching his wrist and a handful of his shirt, where she knelt, giving him strong and desirous eye-contact he could neither break or ignore.

At times it had been difficult to tell just what that single uncovered eye was trying to tell him, such as it was, but this time she made it very clear. Letting his two fingers gradually slide free, sloppy and glistening, she looked up at him.

"_That's_ what I'm gonna do to you," she insisted, lapping one final time at the sensitive web between his digits and leaving a string of drool behind as a keepsake.

His fingers curled meekly, and he could keenly feel the wetness between them as he tried to catch his breath. His face felt like a hot griddle, and he was sure his breath was coming out in clouds of steam. He knew he was going to collapse in a sweltering heap if this kept on, but that little voice kept telling him how awesome this was, and how he should just let it happen. He couldn't quite enunciate a response anyways, so that was just as well. All his sore feelings seemed like nothing next to that sort of apology.

"Take off your pants." she instructed, leaning back a bit on her haunches, smile still bordering on sinister.

It was weird to do it while she was watching, he found, as he pulled his belt out, and held the retainers, feeling uneasy about letting go. Before, it had all happened in the pitch dark, but now... Well, he supposed he could have asked her to turn the closet light off, but it didn't seem all that likely that she would oblige and the little voice he had kept telling him to _sack up_, anyways, so he went ahead and did it.

He didn't really know how he stacked up in terms of other guys. He wasn't even really sure what other guys entailed in this instance, really. He was sure he wasn't setting any world records in any department, but he'd never felt like he was small, certainly. Still, Uranium seemed like she was pretty experienced. The way she acted, the things she did to him. Was she going to laugh at him? He certainly couldn't imagine her being awed by it.

Now that he considered it, just how many guys had Uranium been with before? Where in the hell did he even place along that line-up? She couldn't just be making this up as she went. This was pretty dirty stuff and she was acting like none of it was a big deal, like some porn-star or something.

Was this really a good idea?

The thought seemed stupid, but still it flew up in front of his face like a traffic caution. Really, it opened up a whole other door of concerns, didn't it? Rationality struggled to break its way into the situation. He felt his expression mess up for a moment, kink out of the shape his mask of arousal and bewilderment had molded it into, but then there came that voice again.

_Don't be a pussy, Ritchie. She's totally into you, dude. __**Don't fuck this up for us.**_

Uranium, whether she'd seen better or not, only smiled that ornery smile, and set to her apology with candor. At that point, it was all moot anyways. Ritchie didn't believe he'd have been able to summon up the fortitude to stop her if he'd tried.

* * *

Deliah struggled to keep her eyes focused, hoping neither that she would or wouldn't succeed. It was an interminable period of not knowing whether she should be sad or angry, and not certain even then at whom she should direct those feelings. She felt herself hiccup, and it felt close enough to a sob that she accepted it as such. It didn't make the pain go away, but at least if felt normal.

_Twenty years ago, _she told herself,_ twenty long years ago you made that promise, and dammit, you've got to stand by that promise more than ever, with things as they are._

She'd swore that she'd never stand in Silver's way; that she would never stand opposite of his ambitions and force him to chose between her and them. Whenever she thought back on that time, and compared it to her life now, though, it all seemed so naive and facile. A compromise made to a dying old woman who didn't like the little tart who'd stolen the love of her son. In that light, it was only oath sworn to someone who was dead and gone and had hated her guts to begin with.

Ma Ketchum had been sick since well before Deliah had come into the family. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease had already turned the once proud matriarch into a burdensome, often irrational and demented shadow that hung over the Ketchum family and inflicted herself on everyone. The old Ketchum family, full of good sons, faithful husbands and loving brothers had bared her for far longer than Deliah had, and the suffering, though silent and masked with tenderness, was obvious. Deliah had always resented the old woman for that, till the day she died; that was the reason her promise had been as much an oath that she would never allow herself to become that same sort of shadow, as it was anything else. She would never be a burden on her family.

So even if it was a lost promise to a person that didn't matter anymore, it still affected her most cherished loved ones in a way that meant she would never risk breaking it. In the same way that she couldn't be a pall that hung over this family, call all the shots and make all the decisions, she couldn't let herself be a passive threat to their desires, either. She couldn't say no, even if she said it in a way that made it sound like something else. She had to force herself to not matter in her husband and son's eyes. Somehow, every time, she managed that. She wasn't perfect, granted. She had her lapses, even if she mostly kept them to herself. She had to shrink her heart down for them when it was time to do it, and it hurt like hell, so it was only natural to feel a little miserable.

That was why when Silver came to her, almost immediately after this venture out to meet with Lance, and confided in her that he'd decided to head to the orange islands, battle with and possibly capture a Moltres, as posthumous fulfillment of his partnership with Chikorita; an effort to complete the goal they'd set themselves toward all those years ago, she had grinned and nodded and accepted whole-heartedly his need for satisfaction, for closure. He needed that, and she would give it to him. She would allow it no matter how long and uncertain she knew that journey, and her consequent term of solitude would be.

Then again, maybe that was also why she'd waited until he'd stepped out to visit the professor one last time before his departure to smash a set of dinner-plates and gulp down half a fresh fifth in a quiet conniption of anger and remorse that seemed to have no real beginning or end, just fits and pauses.

Now she sat at the kitchen table resting her bleeding hand and aching head on the same damp dish towel, and trying to think up a good excuse to feed Silver once he came back in, while Mimey swept up the broken shards all around her with subdued confusion and a healthy dose of caution.

She had tried to pull herself together almost at once, but it hurt so bad that all she could do was sit there in a daze and hope that the bourbon would eventually dull down to the pain in her heart to the same comparatively minor annoyance as the cut on her palm. It wouldn't happen, though. She didn't think a person could drink away hurt of this particular caliber. Still, she gave it the benefit of the doubt, and took another swig straight from the bottle. She let her eyes close and tried not to think of much of anything for a good long while.

She looked up again when, with a murmur of discretionary sympathy, Mimey quietly provided her with a glass. Deliah thought was a nice gesture even if it was a bit permissive, but she opted against it, too unsure of her ability to fill it, properly, and with a rapidly onsetting awareness of the passage of time. The momentary thought made her feel a bit alarmed actually, and she recapped the bottle at once.

To her infinite dread and shame, she could hear Silver working at the lock on the front door. She didn't dare stand, but instead slipped the bottle off of the table, and laid it on the pushed-in seat to her left, hoping that it would remain hidden beneath the surface of the table. Silver didn't expressly disapprove of her imbibing, but he would certainly know she'd had far too much if the evidence was out in plain sight, and if he knew that, she was sure that he'd want to know why she'd been drinking.

She fumbled a bit on the release, but managed to get it done even as drunk as she was; which was a miracle in its own right. Without any real frame of reference she tried to mold her features and expression back into some semblance of normalcy, and she was sure that the facsimile was imperfect as Silver stepped around the corner, bag slung over one shoulder.

He paused for a moment against the entryway. and looked at her hand, clamped in the dish towel, slightly pinkened by blood. His brow quirked, and _bless him_, Deliah thought, he asked what must've seemed a completely innocent question at the time.

"Are you okay, sweetpea?"

Any thought she might've had of concealing her true temperament was blown over by that question, toppled under what felt like, in that moment, a category 5 hurricane of ignorance and pig-headedness, and insensitive crassness aimed to hurt her and mock her pain and sensitivity and throw everything she had sacrificed for him right back into her face. Some one may as well have dubbed a great-big "fuck you" over what had actually come out of his mouth, because the perfect storm of bad timing and poor word-choice took out a decade and a half of patience and restraint with no less severity or speed. Even as she was doing it she knew it wasn't fair, and that it wasn't his fault, but it was all bubbling to the surface and she was too damn drunk and upset to stop it now.

"NO I AM NOT OKAY!"

The look on Silver's face as the bottle came hurtling at him end over end changed from a look of stark confusion and surprise, a real _I wish i had never come in here _sort of look, to one that just might've flirted with terror. He wasn't sure he'd ever, even once, seen Deliah reach a level of anger that could be referred to as anything more severe than "rather cross". This seemed somehow nuclear by comparison, he thought as he threw himself sideways.

The bottle shattered on the wall next to him, and though glass burst out in all directions, he was more stricken by room-temperature booze than sharp fragments. He stood there, quite shocked and evidently too uncertain about a followup volley to risk making any moves in one direction or the other.

"I am not okay! I am not okay!" Deliah repeated, slamming her hands down on the tabletop over and over until they were pink and abused. "I am not okay, and I don't know how to be okay, and I don't want to keep pretending that I'm okay! I hate it! I hate this! I'm so damn mad at you for doing this to me! I am sick to death of-of-everything!"

The worst part, Deliah felt, was that Silver didn't yell back. She wanted him to yell back, even if it was only to get her to button it up. She wanted him to holler and scream and tell her to shut up and stop being so insane, and maybe grab her by the arms and shake her until she cried like one of those actresses in old black and white movies, and let herself be embraced miserably after a brief struggle. Silver didn't do that. He just kept standing there and taking it, leaving her no choice but to keep giving it, and all the while she just felt more miserable as the things she said got more and more hurtful and vicious and untrue, like some terrible vomitous evil that had been festering inside her, becoming more malignant and terrible as more and more time went on without ventilation. It just went on and on and on and on. The problems with their marriage, the issues she took with his career, their slowly dissolving family, all of it just spilled out with ten times the venom than she'd ever meant it to..

Maybe that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was almost certainly be what would happen once she got done telling him all these secrets that she had slept on over the years; secret misgivings and grievances mutated into horrible lies that had almost no foundation but what her own misery gave them. She stood there weeping when she was done, throat raw and trembling hands flat on the old oak table, not really sure there was any point in hiding her face, since she'd already put it all out there. She would've liked to have taken whatever rebuttal Silver might've had to offer standing up straight, and with a little more dignity, but now she felt like she just might throw up. The sensation was at least as much liquor as shame, but it was mortifying all the same.

There was a very long period of silence, ruptured only by the half-hearted sweeping of poor Mimey, who was now very uncomfortably trying to siddle in next to Silver and clean up the mess she'd caused without drawing too much attention. When it went on for so long that she had to look up, Silver grimaced like he was having his nipples twisted, pushing his shoulders forward, and his chest back. "I guess this is a really bad time to ask you to come with me, huh?" He held up two St. Anne 2 round-trip Orange Archipelago Cruise tickets, with a bashful expression.

"...Arceus." she coughed, bringing her hand up to cover one eye, her lips trembling. "No-I..." she swallowed. A menacing little part of her wanted to tell him that _yes,_ it was in fact _a really bad time_, and that he should've mentioned this sometime _before_ she'd started flying off the handle, and saved them both a ton of trouble, but she was so undercut by the question that she just didn't have it left in her to be sarcastic. Instead, brain scrambled and wires crossed she laughed, feeling miserable about what she'd done, and cried, feeling giddy with relief. She knew it made her look insane, but she didn't know how else to handle it.

After a while, she found the presence of mind to sit back down. "Can we just f-forget everything that happened since you came in the door?"

Silver, seeming more than happy to do just that, took two steps back around the corner, then re-emerged., feigning innocent curiosity. "Are you okay, sweetpea?"

"I'm fine," she said forcing out the lie she'd originally planned on, though her voice was strained by tears. "I just dropped a plate, is all." She'd hoped to hide her emotions with a more convincing excuse, though, so she went on to add: "It was some of your mom's old china though. I really loved those p-plates. Such a sha-a-haa-ha-a-ame!" the words welled into sobs just as conveniently as she'd planned, allowing her to dump her emotions in a less destructive way.

Now, though, the facade was Silver's to maintain, and dutifully, he did so. It was just the same if he pretended to have never seen her outburst, anyhow. He'd have known the lie for what it was. Silver knew that Deliah didn't give a damn about anything that his mother had left to them, much less some stupid dinner plates. Still, it was his turn to let her do a little leaning, after leaning on her for these past weeks. And his duty ran deeper still if even a small fraction of the aches and pains that she'd expressed to him were true. "It's alright," he mused. "It's just a plate. Just invite one less person for supper, and it'll work out."

She didn't fight him when he came to her, like one of those actresses in old movies. She fell into him face-first and held his jacket in wadded up fistfuls. She was crying her eyes out, but still tried to keep up the facade of candor. "A t-t-trip sounds nice."

Silver chuckled, and patted her back, hoping that she would just cry herself sober again, and be back on her feet. She took her time about it, wailing like a child, and the was he saw it, that was just fine. Misery required a little company, to run its course after all, and he owed back-pay on that. When she was done, she just rested, breathing into his shirt, and groaning. "I didn't mean any of what I said."

He was pretty sure she meant at least a little of it, and he was certain that much and more was fair, and would require his attention in no uncertain terms, but he acknowledged her all the same. "I know, sweetpea." He gave her a brief hug. "Just out of curiosity, though, how much have you had to drink?"

A small gulping sound came up, like maybe the beginning of a hiccup or worse, squashed down by his tight embrace, before Deliah moaned plaintively at the state of herself. "Oh, a whole, whole bunch. I suggest you don't squeeze too hard."

* * *

He didn't know what sort of face he was making, but he was sure it wasn't a very good one; what with his eyes half-way rolled back and mouth pursed around an open vowel sound that hadn't quite made it all the way out yet. As she eased him slowly back off his tiptoes, he swallowed.

Then, so did _she._

It was too much. He couldn't take it. Where the hell did this girl come from? He felt like he would faint, if he didn't find some solidarity soon. He put his hand over his eyes, certain that he was scarlet, and almost positive that he would wake up from a dream if he just interrupted this bizarre stream of consciousness.

"So how was it?" she asked, still quite real in spite of his best efforts to rouse himself.

How did he answer that? Did he say it was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen, felt or even heard of? Did he say how frightened he was that she was some man-eater who'd scratched 'in a janitor's closet' off her list of exploits? Did he say how empty-headed and stupid, senseless and giddy it had made him feel, or did he describe the gut-churning dread that these encounters gripped him with?

Did he flat out tell her that she drove him crazy, or...well, the same thing, but with a different inflection?

"Speechless, I see. Is my apology accepted, then?"

Too blown away to say anything, he just gave a shaky nod. He wanted to sit down, unsure if his weak knees would be able to hold him up much longer, but he needed to put his pants back on first. He rubbed his face some, and then looked for them, but they weren't where he'd left them. Instead, he looked up to find Uranium working her hips back and forth as she hoisted them on, in place of her own.

"Arceus, Ritchie. Do you have _no_ butt? How do you fit into these things?" she asked, casually trying to stuff her dress shirt down into the sagging crotch. They weren't that different when it came to size, but she fit his pants in all the wrong places. Still, after a few moments she'd gotten it looking decent enough, even if it was mismatched to her jacket.

At first he wanted to laugh at her but then he felt an inkling of concern breach through the foam. "What are you doing?"

"Borrowing these," she said simply. "You can wear mine, if you want."

Before he could protest, Uranium turned to give him the briefest one-eyed wink, before cracking the door, glancing around, and stepping out without any further comment. Ritchie felt his face bunch up into an incredible caricature of confusion. He grasped a handful of his own hair in impotent frustration. "What-Why-I don't even..."

With a great huff of exasperation, he took the only course he could. He pulled on her pants-which was a monstrous undertaking in and of itself-because he couldn't very well march back out there with his business all hanging out. The legs were so tight he was pretty sure he could see his pulse, and while they were disconcertingly roomy in the rear-quarters, they left absolutely no room for error in the front. A slightly sticky feeling of lingering moisture on the thighs completed the whole arrangement as poor to intolerable. Still, he could hear them calling Uranium's name over the PA, which meant his wouldn't be too far behind it. It wasn't like he had any choice now.

Closing his eyes and shaking his head, he proffered a question to that little voice inside, sarcastically. "So how was it, _sucker?_"

It didn't answer back.

He pushed his way out of the closet, sidestepped the first person who quirked a brow at him, and tried to find Sparky, to play it off like nothing had happened. Sparky didn't buy it, unsurprisingly.

* * *

"Goldenrod City sure is huge, isn't it?" Dawn said with a wondering grin, as she and Max sat underneath huge umbrella that provided shade to the outdoor seating. Max glanced up for his part and forced a smile, before looking back down.

They'd posted up in town today, which was slightly unusual for Brock's typically rough neck approach to traveling. Brock himself had a bit distracted, though, having to run some errands in town and communicate the results via long-distance phone-call for his brother-mostly financial issues, he'd explained-which involved talking to various people at the bank, who were likewise communicating long-distance with Kantonese branches in the firm. It was in order to do his part to get the Pewter City Gym up to snuff for upcoming PIA inspection, and they'd understood that. He'd left them to their own devices for the time being.

"Dawn, uh, you've got mustard on your face."

Max watched from the corner of his eyes as Dawn looked momentarily mortified, wiped her face with a napkin and then went on in her own beautiful way. He snapped his gaze back down when she seemed like she might look over at him. He didn't want to seem as though he'd been too aware.

They'd separated early in the day, under the agreement that they would meet up again here for a late lunch. Brock was still off handling his tasks, and Dawn assumed that Max must've seen to his. She didn't imagine that the young trainer had already made his attempt at a Plain Badge, or at least if he had, he'd not been outright successful. Maybe that was why he seemed so glum.

She wanted to ask him, but her mouth was still full presently, so she kept chewing. Annoyingly, Max got a word in across her, before she was done, in a way that was distressingly off-putting.

"So, what did you do all day?"

She looked at him and said nothing for a moment, wondering if he would just revert back to silence if she didn't elaborate, and shrugged. "I dunno."

The mall here was huge, but there really wasn't much in the way of coordinating going on here, at least not at the moment. She'd put her name in for a contest at the weeks end, which would actually merit her second ribbon for the region if she could pull out a win.

She'd tried not to steal too much of Max's limelight on what was his debut journey, so she hadn't even mentioned the contest performance she'd thrown together in New Bark (which had been the whole reason for her rush to Johto in the first place) but she was hoping that Max and Brock might come to see her in this one. Hopefully Max would be able to get his badge challenge in by then.

She'd spent most of the rest of the day eating, actually, out of sheer boredom more than anything. Her first idea had been a light snack in the mall, because Brock's proposed lunch time had seemed way too late. The soft-pretzel had been followed by a smoothie, and then later on, a sack full of jelly beans from a candy-shoppe. Later still, she'd had a hot-dog, and then went back to the candy store for the peanut clusters she'd been eyeballing earlier, but had previously decided against.

She glared down at the club sandwich, suddenly feeling like a glutton. "Nothing really," she finally concluded, unwilling to divulge much. She sharply eyed the empty spot in front of her male accomplice. "Why aren't you eating?"

Max looked up only slightly, before rubbing the side of his head, and then resuming his stare at the table. "I'm not that hungry."

Dawn sat the sandwich down on her plate, and moved it just a few inches from herself. Regaining her composure, she tried to push her considered line of questioning. "So what did..."

Max, again, strangely subdued, glanced away from the table, and from her completely as though he were searching for something. Max had always presented himself as pretty reserved, at least inside of her notice, but this seemed off, somehow, even the normal shyness. Besides, she had thought—or at least had hoped—that they had worked their way past all that at Azalea. She let that question die, thinking of another, instead.

"Is something wrong?" she asked after long time had passed in paranoid silence.

At her words, still without looking her in the eyes, Max lifted his hand to the top of his skull, and almost as if trying to collapse himself, pulled his own head downward between raised shoulders.. His other palm shoved itself upward under his glasses and covered both eyes. He looked like he was in pain, almost, his teeth set and bare, but he didn't sob or sniffle like she might've expected, instead he just held that pose, clutching his head from both sides, knees bouncing anxiously.

"...Yes," he answered finally, voice wavering.

Dawn felt her eyes widen, and a sudden panic welled in her. What had happened? Was it something serious? Would she be able to handle this? What should she do?!

She swallowed and clutched her own thumb, wringing her worry out. A quick scoot around the spiral bench brought her over next to Max, and she put a hand on his arm. He'd already made it pretty clear what his physical boundaries were, but he didn't shrug her off or flinch away, so there was that at least. "What's the matter, Max?"

"I did something that I wish I hadn't, but now I can't take it back." Max answered quietly, relinquishing his grip on his face, and settling into a slump, his head thunking against the polymer table-top. He didn't look at her, but at least he wasn't hiding his eyes anymore. "If I wasn't such a screw-up, this never would have happened."

Dawn let her mouth hang open. That just wasn't true! Max, despite his relative lack of experience was a talented battler, and if you were talking book-smarts, she was pretty sure Max could give anybody a run for their money. Maybe he lacked a little social skill, but that was no big deal! "Hey, listen, there's no reas-"

"I released Onix." Max said, with sudden and sharp clarity, seeming to be chilled by the self-recrimination."I just didn't know what else to do."

She tried. Arceus, she tried so _hard_ not to do anything stupid like let her mouth hang open in shock, or stare at him like he was deranged, but it just sortof happened on it's own, and Max went back to holding his head and not crying, which was somehow more painful-looking than the real thing.

* * *

He caught her again on the steps leading out, and tried to give her a piece of his mind, but failed miserably.

"Oh, stop whining. It all worked out in the end, so what difference does it make?" she countered, waving off his protests

He supposed that was true, all things considered. He and Lance had talked for some time, then he'd been briefly brought before Koga and Lorelei, who shared a few words with him, and a few more quietly to lance, before he'd been clapped on the shoulder and given his new charge, without a word mentioned about his tight pants. He didn't really want to let it slide, but the total shock of the situation still had the better of him. He couldn't believe it, really.

The Elite positions had gone to two people he'd never heard of before: Will and Karen, both of whom had ties to the league in one way or another, and one of which who'd apparently been sniped from Mr. Goodshow's personal staff. That did somewhat cement his earlier notion of it not being "what you know" but "who you know", he supposed, but since he'd walked away with his own league commission in the bargain, he could hardly complain.

"Cinnabar Gym." he said quietly. It was all his now. Blaine, apparently having stepped down as the leader to work as a league consultant, had left the position open. With Ritchie's propensity for island-hopping and love of the islands in general, it had all seemed a natural choice, they said.

"You'd better work hard. This makes us rivals, now." Uranium quipped, slapping the letter of station in her hand against the one in his, as though he'd never voiced a grievance at all. Vermillion gym would go from having a drill instructor for a leader, to having something that seemed-to him, at least-much more troubling by comparison. Surge had retired as well, leaving to handle the administration of the Pokemon Corps full-time. Ritchie had heard of the Corps before, but he didn't know much else about it. All the same, Uranium would take control of one of the region's central gyms.

"How you figure?" Ritchie asked. It didn't really seem like there would be much rivalry between them. They would work together to challenge up and coming trainers seeking entry into the pokemon league tournament. That made them allies in a united cause, ostensibly.

"There's a gym-leader tournament toward the end of summer, before league starts," Uranium stated matter-of-factly.

He did remember Lance saying that they were gonna start something like that this year, now that he thought about it. Uranium had obviously been listening more closely to that part than he had. "Yeah, but that's just friendly competition, right?"

Her look told him firmly that she didn't_ do_ friendly. He shrugged it off. "I'll try and prepare myself, I guess."

"Did you see who they gave the Viridian Gym to?", Uranium asked as they cleared the last step, his stride a bit protracted by the tight garment that gripped his legs.

"Yeah, pretty wild." Ritchie nodded, trying to ignore it.

He'd seen that distinctive purple hair on the news quite a bit lately, so it was a bit strange to see that particular individual leaving indigo plateau clutching an identical letter to theirs, especially since said individual looked none too pleased about it. He brushed it aside for the time being.

Now that all the business of the day was done, he thought maybe it was about time he asked Uranium a few questions. Maybe they could talk all this out over dinner, or something? He wasn't sure how this sort of thing was supposed to work. He just knew that it was high time he had some concrete answers about what was going on between them, so that he could at least put all his feelings about her in their proper place, instead of being a complete mess.

Uranium evidently had other plans. "Well, I guess this is it, then." She said with a smirk, already casting out her Braviary. "Seeya 'round, Ritchie."

As if she were making a marked attempt to leave before he could stop her, she was gone again and he was left with no more answers or certainty than before. Perhaps, he seriously considered, even fewer than before. He put his hand across his brow for a while, and tried not to curse.

Eventually, he settled with calling for his friend, and getting a move on. "C'mon Sparky, let's go," he said dolorously. Girls, particularly that one, and all the confusion that they caused would just have to fester for another day, he supposed. On the other hand, his trip to Cinnabar and his new Gym wouldn't wait forever...

That said, it probably would have gone a lot better if the first stride hadn't ripped the groin of his pants.

* * *

Ash smiled when he held his present in his hands. _Really_ smiled, in a way he hadn't in what felt like forever. He knew that, because it sort of hurt his face. "Oh yeah. _That's_ what day it was yesterday!"

How had he forgotten his own birthday? Arceus, he'd been so busy.

"Do you like it?" Misty asked, letting him take the hat from her.

He tested it on his head before responding. It felt a little thick, and he was almost sure the black cotton would make his head crazy-hot if he wore it out too long in the sun, but it was a comfortable fit. He took it off to look at it again. The blue wave-pattern on the front was really neat, but...

"What does _Hanada_ mean?" He ran his fingers across the white embroidered print that ran from front to back on the left side.

"It's the traditional name of the city," Misty said, not at all surprised he didn't know.

Ash shrugged. Suited him well enough, so he rendered his verdict. "It's really nice." He plopped it back onto his head, thankful for at least something to cover his haircut. "Thanks."

"Happy Belated Birthday," Misty said, grinning, even though she looked tired. Oddly enough though, she was the one who asked him if _he_ was feeling okay. "Hey, are you sure you're alright? You look really ill."

Ash shrugged. "I'm fine." Maybe all that crap Baily had talked about was finally catching up to him, but there was no way he was gonna let it slow him down. She didn't look like she was entirely satisfied with that answer, though, so Ash told a little fib. "I think I might've gotten a little bit of a cold from being in the water."

He'd told her the story of what had taken place over these last weeks, with the caveat that she was never to breathe a word of it to his mother. She'd agreed to that much, but she'd still sounded a little alarmed to hear about Melody's role to play in things. Ash wasn't really sure why that was, but he was thankful he'd at least had the good sense to keep the finer details to himself. He was embarrassed enough by them without bringing another person into it.

In turn, she'd told him about all the goings on in the gym. The ins and outs of her new training, how she'd hired on additional help, and her recent win-streak. "I'm still undefeated."

He gave her a thumbs up. "In how long?"

She shrugged. "Since the renovations were completed, the gym is at sixty-four wins, zero losses. You?"

Ash felt a bit of jealousy tug at his heart, but he smashed it away. He still had yet to get out there and properly flex his training skills since they'd last saw one another, so who was to say how well he might've done? "Oh, I dunno. I don't think I've lost any since you saw me last, but I haven't won that many either."

With a smirk, he glanced over towards her. "Are you sure you're counting our gym-battle? You got beat then, remember?"

Misty, like she'd been expecting to hear that, deflected him easily. "In your dreams, you beat me," she scoffed, deciding it best to leave it unsaid that their match together had occurred _before_ renovations were done, at any rate, since it would likely do more to bolster his point than hers.

"As good as," he countered. "I had you on the ropes and you know it."

"Are you saying you want a rematch?" Misty asked with a derisive wave. "Because I can stomp you again whenever you want."

Ash rolled his eyes. "Well, I still need that cascade badge, don't I? How about right now? We can decide it fair and square."

Misty stopped, pulling her lips to the side. The truth was, she couldn't right now. Her challenge schedule was already full up, and would be for the next week. Still, if she just out and out said that, Ash would think she was putting him off.

"Still need a cascade badge? Ash, you already have a cascade badge." Misty remarked, instead choosing to attack the problem for the opposite side.

Ash frowned, annoyed that Misty was feeding him the same line Surge had. Of course, Surge had also explained that he couldn't give Ash a _new _Thunderbadge, because he was retired as head of the Vermilion Gym. _"You'll have to make do with the old one, corpsman! At least until Lance appoints a new leader to take over." _

Misty wasn't retiring though, he knew that much. "I know I still have the old one. I need to collect a _new_ one!"

Misty didn't seem put off of her argument at all, though. "I gave you a new one, you dimwit!" Okay, so maybe gave wasn't the right word. To jar his memory again, she reached out and snatched it from where it rested over his chest. Tightening the chain, a sharp jerk downward brought him face to face with it by force.

He blinked at the small blue teardrop affixed to the front of the bike-lock. "This is a genuine cascade badge. Why would I decorate my own stuff with fake badges?" Misty questioned, hoping that it would go without saying that she'd given it to him in exchange for a good fight, not for an outright victory.

"Alright, alright, I get it jeeze!" Ash managed to shrug her off and tried not to let on that the chain-marks now indented into his skin smarted all that badly, but he held onto the lock and chain all the same, wearing it like a heavy necklace. The effort of standing back straight again made him ache a little, but he wasn't about to let her think she'd gotten the best of him, even for a moment.

Instead, he asked about Kingler, and she about Psyduck, and both had good news to report, insofar as that was concerned. Kingler was guillotining his way through challengers left and right, and he counted his efforts with Psyduck as real progress, even if it wasn't progress of the most orthodox kind.

They walked and talked for a bit, eventually coming to her office, where they sat and talked some more and Misty even dug some plastic silverware out when he offered a bit of the boxed cake his mom had sent him. He didn't really expect her to take him up on the offer, much less cut herself the huge unladylike portion of the slightly melted cake that she did.

She pointed at the slightly distorted "A" on his slice, the only part of the lettering still legible. Neither of them could really tell whether it was supposed to be the one in "Happy", the one in "Birthday" or the one in his name. "Extra icing for the birthday boy, right?"

"I don't think I'm the birthday boy anymore since my birthday was yesterday." Ash rolled his eyes. "Besides, your piece has way more icing than mine."

In response, she simply swiped a finger across the top of his piece, and stuck the heavily coated digit into her mouth. "No," she chortled around her knuckle. "_Now_ it has way more icing than yours."

He wanted to pay her back in kind but his gloves were still on. Luckily, he still had his pikapal to back him up. The little yellow rodent shot up the back of her chair, leapt and snatched a fist-sized hunk of the gooey cake from the plate in Misty's hand, and hit the floor running. Ash laughed, of course, and though she pulled a considerable frown at first, eventually she started laughing too.

He ate only a bit of the cake. It tasted really good, but it was hard to muscle it down. He'd felt pretty queasy since waking up this morning, actually, and the sugary confection wasn't making things any better. Misty simply wolfed hers down with spare compliments to it's taste, and singular intent. Somehow Ash ended up being the one with chocolate on his face when it was all said and done, though.

"So where are you off to next, Ash?" Misty asked, taking his plate and tucking her own beneath it, before tossing the lot of it in a bin.

He shrugged wiping his face with the back of one glove, then wiping his glove on the back of his pants. He hadn't really thought about it expressly. To him, simply going away from Vermillion had seemed like the ultimate goal. "Saffron?" That was as good as any option open to him, and a next logical choice.

Misty nodded, then shuddered a little, remembering the terrible mess they'd all gotten caught up in with Sabrina. "You remember the Pokemon Tower?"

Ash shrugged. His memories of that place were understandably different than hers, but it seemed like a decent opportunity to seem untroubled and casual about something that had scared her when they were little, so he feigned ignorance. "Sort of. I hear they've turned it into a radio tower, now, though," he explained with overwrought nonchalance.

Misty rolled her eyes, wise to his ploy, but said nothing.

It was getting to be time to go, though, both of them eager to get back into the swing of things in their own way, Ash especially so. She gave him a slap on his back, and sent him out ahead of her as they walked back toward the lobby.

Misty could've done without hitting her sisters in the entryway, honestly, since the moment the saw him, they were all over Ash like a cheap suit, pawing at his hair and pinching his arms at the bicep, in a shamelessly apparent effort to draw her ire.

"Hey loverboy," Violet and Lily called, right off the bat, drawing a snarl. She hadn't said anything about Ash being here this morning, so now of course she was going to be hearing about this "tryst" for the next week.

"So rugged and handsome," Daisy cooed, leering at Misty the entire time she caressed Ash's close-cropped head.

"And look at_ this-"_ Violet had begun singsong, but quickly frowned and glared at Ash when she brushed a hand flirtatiously across his midsection, then felt what was really under there. "Okay, like, what's your secret?

Misty was sure her face was scarlet when Lily brazenly lifted his shirt, and traced her finger across his abdomen, but she wasn't sure it was entirely in anger. "Seriously, what do you eat, Ash? I could break change on these abdominals."

"Uh, food?" Ash said rather forthrightly, but Misty quickly overcame all of them with a enraged bark.

"He was just on his way out, and he's in a huge hurry, so stop getting in his way!" She swatted at her sisters hands and jerked Ash, who was thankfully none the wiser to the intricacies of what was happening, right along behind her. Of course, her sisters made catcalls behind her the whole way, but eventually she did make it out to the front step without dying of mortification.

When she turned, Ash was looking down at his stomach, shirt lifted and brow quirked. "Is there something wrong with my belly?"

She tried not to look at the tone and definition that the Corps had left him with, telling herself that there was no reason to be interested anyways. They were just stupid abs. She crossed her arms and frowned, to made it evident how little they impressed her. The heat that lingered in her cheeks told her that the color was not going to leave her face anytime soon, though. Infuriated, she slugged his arm hard, and he thankfully dropped the hem of his shirt to rub at it. "Knock it off," she hissed.

"Knock what off?" Ash complained, letting his pain show before h e had the chance to hide it. "That really hurt!"

"Oh grow up." Misty spat. "You can't take one lousy punch from a girl?"

Ash didn't think the punch was really all that lousy, but there was no way in hell he was gonna say so. Still, his mother had raised him not to hit girls._ She'd also raised him to say nothing if he had nothing nice to say_, but the fact of that matter was, his mother wasn't here to stop him. "It might be different if it wasn't coming from a great big _Kangaskhan-sized girl_ like you."

Just as he predicted, Misty howled like she was out for blood, but he was already taking flight down the stairs. Her legs were very very long, and she pursued him for a fair clip, but in the end, he was still the faster. He laughed and waved as she fell behind after a few nearly-missed grabs for his jacket. "Seeya around Misty! Thanks for the hat!"

Misty slowly strode to a halt, and Pikachu made a wide curve around her from the rear, "Pikachupii"-ing his own farewell. In spite of her flaccid anger, for some reason she was waving.

When thoughts of toned, cut musculature crept into her head, though, she spun on a dime and stomped back to the gym. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she ranted the whole way.

* * *

"Saffron?"

Lance crossed his arms. "Is there a problem?"

"You want us to look for an unknown terrorist in the middle of the largest city in Kanto?" Holiday asked, eyes narrowing in a strange mixture of distaste, and if Doc wasn't mistaken, satisfaction.

They were sitting in the back of Lance's stately limo, all frowning at one another. Lance because he was annoyed, Doc because he was worried and Holiday, because he liked to frown.

It didn't seem to bother him at all that Lance was the foremost leader in all of mainland Kanto. In fact, it seemed to make heckling the man all the more enjoyable to Holiday. He'd spent the last half hour doing it, after all, and it seemed as though if Lance didn't kick him out soon, he would really go on a tear.

"I want you to dredge up any PLF, or Team-related activity here, using any means you believe reasonable." The Champion explained, tone growing uneven.

"I assume going around asking people on the street whether they've read any good separatist propaganda pamphlets lately is out of the question." Holiday drawled.

"Strictly." Lance advised, now seeming to be unable to look directly at Holiday, lest he boil over.

Holiday smacked his lips. "Any leads?"

Lance, in perhaps the closest thing to an outright insult he'd ever given in his career, rolled his eyes. "If I had any leads in Saffron, I would hardly require assistance from Cipher to pursue them."

Holiday seemed not to hear the rebuke. "Okay, so city of three million. Maybe one guy-who's evidently eluded detection from the people who have the most motivation and funding to find him-hiding out among them. Then again, maybe he's not here at all. That's what you're telling me?"

Lance, now brusquely dismissive, popped open the car door, and gestured for Holiday to exit. "You see why I cannot afford to devote any more of _my_ time to the task."

Holiday didn't budge at first. Instead, he just smiled, and Doc expected a big row to get started. With a snort of derision and a jut of his chin, however, Holiday slid noisily out of the plush leather seat, and Doc tried to send a pleading look Lance's way as he followed, as if to say _I'm not really with this guy, we just work together. _Lance already had fingers pressed firmly to the bridge of his nose, eyes squinted in what looked like the beginnings of a migraine, though.

When they stepped out, the limousine wasted no time at all in departing. In fact, it seemed to make a definite attempt to sideswipe the taller, more annoying of the two admin as it left. Holiday only dug in his ear with a fingertip and looked around, as if he were already hot on the trail of the elusive terrorist.

"So what do you think?" Doc asked, measuringly.

"Shh." Holiday made a sinching gesture toward Doc's face, and continued to look for something, only further reinforcing the impression that he was onto some holmsian trail of auditory clues. Doc waited for some explanation, but instead Holiday asked him a question.

"Do you know why we're here, if all the real leads are in Johto?"

"Johto?"

"Yeah, apparently, there was an eyewitness sighting of the man himself in Goldenrod, just two days ago."

"Ghetsis Harmonia?!"

"Tippy top of the league's most wanted."

"So why **are** we here, if he wants us to root out the PLF?"

"I asked you first."

Doc considered the possibilities for a moment, and then answered with a frown. "He doesn't _want_ us to root out the PLF."

Holiday snapped gloved fingers; a dull sound. "Got it in one. You and I, my close-cropped friend, are on a snipe-hunt."

"Why?" Doc queried, bewildered, but Holiday again held up a finger to silence him.

A pregnant silence passed, with Holiday once more glancing around cautiously.

When he finally spoke, it was in a rapid deluge. "He zeroed in on us at Cape Cerulean, busted into sales records for that boat we rented, and backtracked it to my credit card. Of course he couldn't really get anything out of that lead, since it's under a fake name, but, it did mean he could follow us from the purchases we made, and he did, right up until we split at Vermillion. He apparently put a tail on you, but he lost track of me, and you never panned out into anything threatening, so he just let it go."

Doc gave his partner a bewildered look.

"He was intending to contract outside help in order to look for Ghetsis, because league involvement would automatically mean league interest, in the eyes of the media. Better to seem like the issue was beneath their notice, than make that investiture. When he sought private investigators from Cipher and we showed up, though, everything came full circle. Now he doesn't know who he's dealing with. Before he thought we were involved with team Rocket, or some old Plasma syndication, but now he's not sure. Doesn't know whose side we are on. He figures it will be better to put us on a wild zangoose-chase here, so that he knows what we're up to at least, while he gets someone from the g-men to look into Goldenrod."

Doc, now plainly confounded, grabbed his partner by the arm. "How do you know all that? Did he say something in the car, that I missed?"

Doc wondered if there had been some element of innuendo in Holiday and Lance's byplay that he'd been oblivious to, or if Holiday was one of those people who could tell your whole life story from a glance. That would certainly have explained some things. He'd been with Holiday the entire time since they'd landed, so it wasn't like he and Lance could have had a private conversation without him

Holiday, however, only favored him with a piteous look, as if to say he was slow on uptake, and tilted his head to one side, indicating the tiny earpiece in his ear. "You'd be surprised at the things people say when they think nobody can hear. I bugged his limo right before we got out. Slid the reciever down into the seat cushions while he was looking the other way to keep from punching me in the face. He just explained everything to some guy named Will. The driver, I'm guessing."

"Ah, so you were just being a dick to distract him."

"No, I was doing that because I'm a dick, but it's six of one, half dozen of the other."

"Oh. So, what, then, you're gonna keep track of where _he_ goes, now?"

"Nah. This is Champion Lance we're talking about. He'll find that bug before it-" Holiday suddenly winced, a shrill noise exploding into his earpiece before so loudly that even Doc could hear it. Swearing, Holiday pried the tiny button-like device out of his ear and tossed it to the ground.

Doc watched him step on it, with a small chuckle. "Think he was mad?"

Holiday snorted, quite pleased with himself despite the temporary deafness. "Real mad," he responded, just a bit too loudly.

Holiday nodded in the direction of downtown, and Doc followed, folding his hands behind his head. He had a fair amount of respect for Lance, unlike Holiday, but it was a bit relieving to be out of his presence. Lance was an old associate of Bruno's and Doc still felt a bitter tightness in his throat whenever he thought of his old sensei. "So what are we gonna do, if Lance just dumped us here to waste our time?"

Holiday shrugged. Honestly, he was still steamed over being ripped away from his research at Realgam, but that was a matter for which Kazuo was responsible, and the man was competent enough, whatever else he was. Plus, the CEO already conceded that he would need be kept under advisement, and would call Holiday when he needed further information or instruction. "Lance expects us to come up empty-handed. Why disappoint him? No sense in working ourselves to the bone trying to find something that isn't there. Let's go stir up some trouble."

"What about Ash?" Doc asked, cutting through the prospect of fun and enjoyment with a reminder of their other task. "Boss said we're still supposed to keep track of him. Lure him away from training." An unspoken statement in Docs eyes said that he clearly still held a lot of reservations about Ash Ketchum. "And there's still that other shit we talked about."

Holiday shrugged, and produced a small aerosol from his backpack and sprayed himself down with it. "Whipped up a new batch of this. Put some on." From the sinus-irritating smell, Doc presumed it was Max-Repel, as he begrudgingly applied some. "For now, all I'm worried about is that Pikachu of his. We'll focus down the other shit later." He glanced down at his transceiver, and poked at it a few times. "Sat-tracker says he's close to town. He can come too, I guess." Holiday shrugged.

"Too? What, he's just gonna pal around with us, instead of training pokemon? That's your big plan for throwing him off course?"

Holiday put a soothing hand on Doc's shoulder. "Come on, bro! Off the top of your head, what is my greatest ability?"

Doc couldn't resist. "Poor taste in clothing."

"Impeccable, was the word you were looking for-and no, the other ability is the one I was talking about."

"Being an impossibly huge douche-bag."

"The _other_ other one."

"Eating. Napping?" Doc ventured. "Stop me if I get it right: Whining. No?"

"Being a bad influence! Being a bad influence is like, my _super-power_, man." Holiday finally snapped.

Doc thought about it. It sortof was true. All he really had to do was look at his own life, to say that was a strong talent in Holiday's repertoire. He made an appreciative face, and nodded his acceptance of the assertion.

"Now C'mon. Lets find a place to crash. I still need to sleep off this jet-lag." He insisted, before a buzz on his wrist gave him pause to look down at an incoming text message on his cross-transceiver.

**New Message: oi holly its roxie. this is this still ur mobile number right cunt? show tomorrow in lavender. kanto tour. be there yeah?**

Holiday barked with laughter. That would do nicely for a means of entertaining themselves.

**Be there**, he snapped back.

* * *

Ash bent over and braced himself, hands to knees. The trip had gone well, not even taking as long as he might've expected, but he was still absolutely exhausted from the road by the time they made it into Saffron proper. He took the chance to sit down, granted by a street corner bench, and shrugged off his backpack. taking off the straps felt like digging meat cleavers out of his shoulders.. He tried to rub the soreness out, and it did dull a bit, but it just wouldn't leave.

Pikachu leaping up into his lap, did turn his frown into a smile, though.

"I'm alright. Just a little worn out," he assured, as Pikachu trilled his concerns.

Pikachu harped on anyways. "Pikapi pii pikachu!"

Ash guessed he could understand the worry. He'd lost his balance and fallen a while ago-not that odd, really, given his track-history-until you considered that he'd been motionless at the time, simply reaching out to point towards their wayward destination. as it crested the hilltop before them. He'd tried to be more careful with his footing, as they went on, though it was more out of embarrassment than anything.

"I'm alright, really," he said, this time with a little more conviction.

Pikachu's ears lowered for a moment with concern, but then the tiny yellow rodent scrambled out of his lap and around his side under one arm before he could react, to dig around in his backpack. He went to turn, but a sudden crick in his neck stopped him cold. He could feel Pikachu rummaging around, the bulge of the backpack contorting on the bench beside him, but it wasn't until Pikachu scampered back around in front of him, holding the item he'd been burrowing for, that Ash realized what he'd been after.

The huge hunk of cake, now a melted glob of sugary homogenized confection, held together by many layers of shrink-wrap was offered by tiny hands for his consideration. The sight of it triggered two simultaneous, and incongruous reactions.

Mentally, he realized that he hadn't eaten in a full day, the last bite he'd endured being of the same cake during his impromptu birthday ceremony. It had been very good, actually, in spite of how poorly it had kept.

Physically, though, he was consummately repulsed. His stomach turned over like he was falling, and his mouth watered in quite the opposite of anticipation. He swallowed and reflexively looked away, pushing the offering down gently.

"I'm _not _hungry," he declared with surety.

Pikachu softly chuued in sympathy, and perhaps a bit of disappointment.

Ash, feeling like he had to pull himself together, as much for Pikachu's sake as for his own, stuck the wad of cake back into his pack and threw the thing back on with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He was careful about getting back to his feet, so as not to upset his partner any further with another incidental stumble, and nodded down the street, indicating that Pikachu should lead. He vaguely remembered where the Saffron City Gym was, and he didn't want to delay any longer.

Valiantly, he made it six blocks before changing his mind. The sight of a Pokemon Center rearing around the corner, and the alternative prospect of eight more blocks of dense, loud and cramped inner-city travel softened his resolve.

He checked himself into a Pokemon Center at three in the afternoon, dropped his backpack as soon as he was in the door to his room, flopped onto the bed and fell asleep with his shoes and jacket still on by three ten, with Pikachu curled onto his back.

He woke up sweating and thirsty from a confusing dream that he forgot as soon as he opened his eyes, twelve hours later. He kicked off his shoes, clawed his way out of his soaked hoodie and jeans, pushed away the bedclothes, even shrugged away Pikachu's uncomfortable heat. Too tired to get up, he ignored his thirst as a minor discomfort, and fell back into an exhausted unconsciousness.

At four in the afternoon the next day, he woke up to the sound of his 6AM phone alarm still going off, and he was trembling and dizzy when he tried to sit up, but his determination, fresh from more than twenty four hours of bedrest managed to get him into the bathroom where he took a cup of water, drank half of it, then threw the rest into his face.

He realized, as he looked up at his own dripping countenance, that he felt like burnt out buildings looked, but that he had to make his reflection look normal at least. He owed this gym battle to Pikachu and the rest of his pokemon, and he wasn't about to let some stupid flu, or whatever the heck this was stop him. He rubbed the fatigue out of his eyes, and tried to massage the pained look on his face into a more relaxed shape. He kept at it for nearly a half hour.

It was like trying to build a sandcastle at high tide, his efforts washed away by waves of discomfort and drowsiness, but he kept at it, until eventually he looked something like what a human was supposed to, and emerged.

He put on his clothes carefully and gingerly, strapping on his backpack which felt somewhat lighter than it had yesterday, thankfully. He collected Pikachu, who was still sleeping and looked as though he'd been catching up from a pretty restless night with Ash's tossing and turning, for at least as long as he'd been in the bathroom and allowed the poor pokemon to have the bed to himself.

His best friend didn't hesitate to hop to, when it was time to go, however. Together the pair made their way back into the lobby, where Ash' turned in the key to his room. He hesitated at the desk, though, thinking back on his Corps training.

He was it awful shape, and he knew it. All the brave faces and reassuring smiles he could give wouldn't make nearly as much difference as he would've liked to believe. That said, this battle with Sabrina was important, and he couldn't put it off.

He had to make sure they could go into this fight with the best possible circumstances and advantages in order secure a win, but he was not the only one stepping into this conflict. Truthfully, his role, though integral, was relatively minor in terms of the total picture.

_I am not the ship, but only it's captain._

He turned back to the counter, and addressed Nurse Joy. "I'd like to use the Pokemon Storage System, please."

She directed him to the Kiosk with a smile, and helped him set up the transfers that he wanted. He tried to withdraw pokemon well suited to the upcoming battle, and retain those that would have their own unique advantages.

He tried not to take forever deciding, but after a time he concluded it would be best to place Tauros and Snorlax in reserves. He could use them in other fights, and they weren't especially well suited to face off against Sabrina's pokemon.

In their place, he withdrew Totodile and Torterra, both of whom, aside from being tenacious battlers, had nasty Bite attacks that would be very useful against Sabrina's team.

It was tough to swap out Bulbasaur, especially since the little powerhouse had saved his hide so many times in the Corps, but there was another pokemon who's strong type match up would be of greater benefit to the team, and space was at a premium. Heracross, with whom he hadn't battled with in a long time was a welcome addition to the team, in Bulbasaur's place.

Charizard, he decided, he would keep for a little longer, before sending him back to his training in Charrific Valley. He might need the dragon in this battle, after all. If he couldn't win with strategy and type advantage, he was sure that Charizard's brute strength would get him out of a bind.

Psyduck, he was stuck with for better or worse, but there remained the possibility that this battle would be a good proving ground for the goofy water-type, and a chance for his repressed psychic abilities to be put to the test. He wouldn't deny Psyduck that opportunity, if it came.

Pikachu, of course, wasn't going anywhere.

He withdrew the new pokeballs from the receptacle and clipped them onto his belt. Feeling somewhat renewed by the cathartic nature of the process, he smiled wanly, and departed, quite intent.

The trip did not come as hard as it had the day previous, though it did still drain him. He stood before the strangely umbrella-shaped stadium, thoughts focused, even if his body wasn't so cooperative and willing, and with Pikachu by his side, he felt like he could do anything.

He hadn't expected to find himself in this situation, but then life was full of the unexpected. He pushed open the doors, and went inside.

Sabrina's life, however, was not full of the unexpected. On the contrary, things usually happened just the way she expected them to, to the letter. Therefore, it was not even remotely surprising for her to see Ash Ketchum come through the doors to her Gym. She'd been there to meet him, after all. Ash, perhaps was a bit surprised to see her waiting for him there, just inside, and certainly seemed so when she snagged his elbow and turned him directly about, but to her, it was all certainty.

"Supper," she said, walking straight beside him, without so much as a glance into his eyes. In fact, she barely regarded him at all.

She didn't need to. She knew what that expression of confusion and growing irritation looked like, and not simply because she remembered him as a boy five years younger. She knew without seeing the sag of his arms or the painful rigidity of his back that he was desperately tired and worn, yet ultimately too full of hope and ambition and hunger to rest. She felt it all, knew it all, because it had always been laid out that way in her mind. This moment, this very moment, and all of it's intricacies had always been waiting for her. She'd had her entire life to contemplate it, so she didn't need to soak in further detail, now.

"I-but-I-well-I'm not really all that hungry-" Ash began to protest, but then his stomach snarled something fierce. His feeling of nausea the previous day had lessened somewhat, and he felt hungry for the first time in several. "-Oh." He still felt a little green, but apparently his stomach was raring to go again. All the same, he was here for a reason! He dug his heels in, and Sabrina did stop, but not to turn around.

"You're here for a Marsh Badge. I know," she offered quietly to the air, still not regarding him at all.

She closed her eyes. Ash believed he had one goal only, but everything else would have to fall into place too-and it would, regardless of what either of them did. Yet, she realized that she needed to spare him that brief acknowledgment, if only to make it easier to understand. For him, this was all chance, all sudden, all confusing, she forced herself to remember. For him, this moment was just like any other, his course unclear and her goals, certainly nebulous at best.

"I knew you would be here," She allowed, turning slightly to glance at him for the first time. Her hair fell in a curtain-like shroud across her cheek, with only the slightest red glimmer behind it to suggest she was seeing him at all.

Ash didn't think that was so amazing a prediction, so he pointed back toward the gym. "Sure, so lets batt-"

"You're not ready yet," she offered simply. "We need to talk first."

If he wasn't so baffled by the statement he might've been angry enough to protest when she indicated for him to carry on in the direction he'd come from. For some reason, perhaps only because he didn't have suitable strength to mount a proper resistance, but more probably because he was suddenly starving, Ash did fall into step beside her, though. Sabrina didn't seem surprised by that, because she wasn't. This was already determined, just so.

Ash just watched her as they went along, trying to keep pace without tripping or stepping on Pikachu who scampered along behind him, unable to do much else.

Sabrina was taller than him, but not so tall as Misty. Slim and almost lanky, in that same way, but with more of wispy and fragile quality than the Cerulean trainer's more athletic aspect. He remembered Sabrina as being to closer to Brock's age when they'd first met, perhaps even older, but even then her peculiarity had made her seem much older in an ominous and sinister way.

Out here, in the sunlight, she seemed bizarrely normal to him, even if it was in the way of a foreigner from some dark land in a strange locale of sunlight and people. She walked with the bearing nearly as tired as his own, and that did belie some element of what he'd remembered, but she did not seem quite as old as Brock, now that he saw her out in the open. An adult, definitely, but only barely. Maybe not so much older than him, even.

She led him down the busy street, her hand tucked into the crux of his elbow, certainly not in the manner of a boy and a girl accompanying one another to a meal, but in the manner of a guide who had become pressed for time. Her manner when they did at last reach the small corner restaurant didn't seem to change any, at least so far as he could tell, but she let his arm go, and allowed him to simply stand beside her as she waited for her turn to take a seat.

Normally, a maitre de or hostess would have led them there, but Sabrina was well enough known in Saffron that nobody bothered trying to lead her anywhere, evidently. Ash imagined, that much like now, she would appear when and where she was needed and not a moment or millimeter to either side of it. When the party in front of them was moved to a table, Sabrina simply moved to the next open booth, and waited for the bus boy to finish wiping under the salt and pepper shakers to seat herself.

Sabrina gestured for Ash to be seated across from her, but he just stood there, slightly bewildered.

She needed to be a little more personable, she realized, with a sigh. It was hard for other people to understand her perspective. People often found it repugnant when she treated them like game pieces, and she supposed she could understand that. She smiled; a rare sight. "Are you feeling well?"

Ash did sit down, but it was still with a frown. "I feel a little-"

"Sick, I know," she finished, unable to stop herself. "Thats alright. You're going to feel better for a while. It will come and go."

Ash felt his brows wiggling, as he was unable to find the right emotion to express to her. "I'm confused."

"I know."

He wanted to slap his own face. This was getting redundant. "Should I just let you talk, then?"

Sabrina sat back in her seat. "No, it's better if we both talk. Is there anything you want to ask me?"

Ash thought about it. She was a psychic right? There most certainly were things he wanted to ask her. "Will I-"

"Yes, definitely," she cut across him, leaving him stunned for a moment. He'd meant to ask an either-or question, but he supposed that answered it in the most general sense. Still, his mind reeled for another big important question.

"If I go-" he began.

"No, but she won't either."

Ash wasn't really sure what that answer meant, but he pressed on. "Should I-" he tried instead.

"Yes, but only on days that start with the letter t." She offered, with a roll of her eyes, which he wasn't quite sure how to take.

Drawing in a breath, he asked the most important question of all. "How-"

"For as long as it takes," the psychic concluded, lending none of the weight he'd imparted the question with to it's answer..

It was Ash's turn to lean back, in appraisal. She stared back just the same, her expression giving away nothing.

"Is there anything else?"

"I'm thinking of one to stump you."

"Ah." Sabrina replied, not bothering to deny the possibility.

After a while of coming up dry, Ash seemed to forget the notion anyways. "So does everything you say come true?"

"It's not really like that. It's more prediction than wish fulfillment." She said, folding her fingers.

"But, I mean, how do you do it?"

"A psychic reads certain energies to make accurate predictions. Aura, among others. Anybody can read the words printed on a page, Ash. I do no differently."

He nodded his head to make it seem like he understood. That didn't really seem to compute, though. At least, not any more than what he'd said. Aura was definitely a thing, he'd accepted that much, but he didn't see as how anyone could predict things from it. "I don't think I could do it."

Sabrina shrugged. "Not true. In fact, a great reserve of aura, like that which you have, might indicate an innate psychic ability." She seemed to consider him for a moment, and he almost laughed.

Him? A psychic? He shrugged back at her, deciding to roll with it. " Might? Wouldn't you just know, like, automatically, being psychic and all?"

She laid her hands on the table, one over another, and looked directly at him for a long second, which made him feel slightly uncomfortable. He would have been highly skeptical, had he not already been made crucially aware of Sabrina's true psychic ability first-hand, and though he didn't get any directly unsettling feelings from her look, it was difficult to look unbothered in the path of a stare which he knew was penetrating him to the core.

"You're a very powerful individual, Ash." She said, after a moment, her wide-eyed, empty stare becoming a look of demure reservation once more. "There's a lot about about you that even you don't know, or understand. You are still coming in to your own, and that's to be expected, since that was the point of this journey from the start, and it is not yet complete, correct?" She turned her head aside questioningly but apparently the poorly hidden look of certainty on his face was all the confirmation she needed.

"So, I could tell you that something is true about you today, that may be untrue tomorrow. A month ago, you were not the same as you are now, true? Likewise, If I were to say that, 'No, Ash, I do not sense that you are psychic.' I may later have to eat my words. The many ley lines of Aura that intersect with you obscure much, and even my saying so one way or another could have an effect on the eventual outcome. Not until you rein them in, and those ley lines become more substantial will anyone truly know for certain what you are capable of."

"But, I'm not a psychic." He raised an eyebrow, when it seemed like she was going to have to double back on her explanation. "-At least, not at the moment, right?"

She shrugged her shoulders again, and turned down the corners of her mouth, to say that that was more or less the case, but offered, "There is a simple way to find out."

The waiter came by, then, and Sabrina ordered for both of them, unsurprisingly selecting just exactly the items he wanted, down to the particulars, including the extra ketchup for his pokemon partner. He handed his menu over before giving her a small smile and a roll of his eyes, suggesting he was duly impressed.

"How's that?" He asked out loud, turning back to face her.

"Well, just make a prediction." She insisted.

"I will become Pokemon Master." He said, almost instantly, inciting a giggle that sounded rusty with disuse.

"Not like that. Something simple. Something within the next 5 minutes or so." She swatted the air as if to chastise him.

"The milkshake I ordered will be delicious." He said, quite seriously, after a moment of thought, causing Sabrina to let out another soft chuckle, and dysfunctional smile.

"For five Pokedollars it ought to," she managed collecting herself after a moment. "Something based a little more on chance."

" Uh..."Ash racked his brain, and looked around the dining room, but gleaned nothing, even after almost a full minute of searching. "Give me an example."

"Alright." Sabrina cleared her throat, and sat up straight in the booth. "Look through the window behind me."

He leaned over a bit, to look past her shoulder. He could see the street outside, and the Saffron City traffic.

"The next car to pass by will be blue." Sabrina said simply, causing him to look away and to her, for a moment. When he glanced back, sure enough, a blue sedan was passing.

Ash smiled. "Okay. What about the next one?"

"Gray."

It was gray. He nodded. "The next one?"

"Red."

Of course, true to form, her prediction was accurate. He leaned back in his seat, a bit, as their drinks arrived.

"Okay, you try." She commanded. "Then you'll know."

Ash mimicked her posture as best he could. "Alright, I guess." He felt sort of silly. "Should, I like..." He fumbled for the right words, not wanting to seem like he was mocking her. "Close my eyes, or something?"

She smiled kindly, evidently unoffended, which he was thankful for. "If it makes you feel more comfortable. Just go with your gut instinct."

He found that it did make him feel more comfortable, or at least, less uncomfortable, if he did close his eyes. He cupped his hands around the angled glass of his milkshake, and bit the inside of his lip.

"The next car to go by will be..." He searched his mind for an answer, but nothing seemed any more likely. The first color that came to him was yellow, because Pikachu bumped his arm at that moment, but it didn't seem very likely that there would be a yellow car going by.

"Gray." He said, mimicking one of her answers, having noted that gray cars seemed to be very frequent in Saffron. He cracked open one of his eyes to see if her look would suggest whether or not he was right or wrong, but it didn't. He closed it again.

"The next one?" She asked, neutrally.

Hell, why not, he thought, coming back to the color of his Pokemon's fur. "Yellow."

There was a long pause, and just when he was about to open his eyes, she prompted him again. "And the next one?"

He thought frantically for the next few seconds before repeating himself, having drawn a complete blank. "Yellow." He shook his head, scornfully, before opening his eyes. One yellow car would have been pretty rare. Two was just stupid.

Sabrina just looked at him calmly, and smiled. "The first one was Yellow. But not the last two."

He opened his mouth to exclaim that that had been his first thought, but he stopped when he realized that she probably already knew. He just laughed. "Probably not psychic, huh?"

"Probably not. Not today, at least." She said, offering just the smallest smirk.

"Alright," Ash conceded finally, as the food arrived. His milkshake was delicious, so even though he wasn't a psychic per se, he wasn't all that disappointed. Sabrina's "usual" oddly enough turned out to be a hard-boiled egg, which she left in the cup, untouched. "So...what was it that _you_ wanted to talk about."

Sabrina's slight smile faded. From a humanitarian standpoint she'd been hoping that Ash would be the one to open up to her. Logically, she'd known that he wouldn't, of course. This wouldn't be quite the conversation he was hoping to have, she was sure, and it would certainly be a marked departure from the discourse so far. "You're going to have to learn to use your Aura." It wasn't as much command as it was certainty, but he could take it either way.

Ash sucked in a breath, which unfortunately turned out to be mostly burger. After coughing, hacking and slapping the table for several minutes, he finally managed to offer an angry retort. "No," he hissed. "I'm a trainer and that's_ all._"

Sabrina didn't so much as bat an eyelash. "That's just the thing. You're not just a trainer. You're a trainer and _something else_. It's the something else that I'm chiefly concerned with now."

Ash felt his face contort into a snarl, but then another cough ruined it. He wasn't going to join the Guardians! He had things he needed to do! "I'm going to continue with my journey, and nothing you say is going to stop me."

"I have no doubt you'll try." Sabrina offered, yet her look still spoke volumes as to the truth of the matter.

Ash gripped the edge of the table, teeth bared. She was asking him to lay down his dreams and surrender! He was through being nice about it. If it would settle this matter, then fine, he'd just come right out and say it! "I'll never use Aura again," he swore, and barely able to keep his voice level, "and that's final." His proclamation finished, he slipped back into his seat, and rubbed his eyes. "...I don't even know how I did it the first time."

Sabrina too, eased back into the booth-seat, her point made, and inexorably true no matter what argument Ash intended to level at her. She saw no need to validate his counter by offering riposte. He would swallow his oath. Not presently, perhaps, but on a day not all that distant. Her role was to ensure that his potent Aura would be put to good use when the time came.

"I do," she offered. "I can show you how."

Ash squeezed his eyes shut, absently scratching Pikachu. "I don't care. I'd rather know how _not_ to, honestly."

"I can show you that too." It was a ploy in truth. Teaching him the inverse would insure that the correlating lesson got across just as well. She could work with that. Sabrina let a smile show again, for his sake. He looked up from Pikachu, however slowly, but the expression on his face let her know she had him straight behind the eight ball.

"...Yeah?"

"Yes." Sabrina assured. She didn't need to dangle the idea in front of him. She knew he would accept that offer. "But first, there is something I need from you..."

* * *

Brock raised both hands in protest at Dawn's impatient hiss of annoyance.

"No, I mean, what is it that you want me to do about it?" he asked quietly, trying not to let the matter escalate into a screaming match. Max was still over in the next room of the pokemon center, after all, and the walls in such places were notoriously thin. He'd gone silent a while ago, his muted groans of misery phasing into the stillness of sleep, but there was the always the possibility he was listening.

Dawn felt like she could have shaken Brock by his collar. She empathized with the fact that Brock had been out all day, and was very tired from a tedious and lengthy chore that had reaped no real personal benefit. His generosity had to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but still, this was important-really important! Max was their friend, and letting him suffer this way just seemed cruel.

"Something," she snarled. "Anything."

Brock harrumphed, and considered shutting off the light and dismissing her from his room, but he sighed after a moment of frowning. Honestly, it had been a long day already, and if the coordinator wanted to go to bed thinking he was heartless, then that was just fine with him. That damage he could repair tomorrow after some sleep.

The fact of the matter was that Dawn plainly just didn't understand the situation, and if he just kicked her out of his room then surely she would take the matter into her own hands. Brock was sure that would be the absolute worst result, and thus resigned himself to continuing this argument, conversation, whatever the heck it was, for at least as long as it took Dawn to understand that there was nothing either of them could do for Max, except wait it out, and let him recover all on his own.

"I am open to suggestions," Brock offered, hoping that he could very concisely explain why each of her ideas wouldn't work. He sat up a little against the headboard, laid down the trashy paperback he'd been reading to unwind, and gave her the pretense of his full attention.

Dawn slumped back onto the bedside chair, eyes smoldering, but said nothing for a while, as if she were truly considering how to tackle the problem. When at last she did speak, it was nothing constructive. "Why are you giving me such a hard time, Brock?"

Brock flung his hands up again helplessly. "Its not that, Dawn. It's just, well, what is there to do?" He started ticking off his fingers. "He released Onix, which says to me right there that there was plenty and enough reason, however he feels about it now. Does Max seem like the kind of person who makes snap decisions to you?

"No, he doesn't" He answered for her, impatiently, and then ticked off his next finger. "Onix _did_ in fact leave when he released her. That tells me that this was a two-sided issue, and not just a matter of Max doing something because he was coerced into it by this..._guy_, whoever he was.

"And lastly, this is a hard, emotional issue for Max, because it's a hard, emotional issue for anyone," he concluded after ticking off his third finger. "Sometimes things in life are painful because they're meant to be and you trying to change things is just-"

"No, no, _no_, shut up!" Dawn shouted, actually shouted, pulling a pillow off the bed and sending it sailing across the room to clatter noisily against the blinds. "I'm done with everyone feeding me that _everything can't be the way you want it _bullcrap! Ash was one thing, but this is completely different. Things changed the other day in Azalea! For the better! I'm not going to just sit by and watch all of that come apart! You can if you want! I don't know why you're being such a jerk about this, but if you don't care enough to help Max to help him now, when things are hard, then I don't know why he'd even want to travel with you-"

Brock, who was covering his eyes in consternation and embarrassment, tried to cut back in, but he was repulsed by her aggravated snarl as she snatched up another pillow, this one from behind his head, causing his shoulders to thump against the headboard. She hurled it into his face, and by the time he recovered, she was already marching back out the door.

He groaned and threw on his jeans. "Damnit, Dawn," he hissed, as he got up and followed her, hopping on one foot and pulling at the heel of his left sneaker. He met her in the hallway, just as she was re-emerging from her own room, pack strapped over her shoulder and stride fierce. He blocked her path. She didn't say anything at first, only glared, eyes becoming narrow slits that vented a coal-fire of emotion.

"Just tell me what it is you hope to accomplish."

Dawn's features screwed up briefly. "I don't really know yet," she admitted. "But that's not the point!"

She tried to press past him, but Brock hooked her elbow and spun her about gently. "You can't just go off all half-cocked here and hope to make this better, Dawn. Listen to me for a second."

Dawn shugged him off and stomped both of her feet. "No, I'm done sitting here. I'm just going to go back to Union Cave, find Onix, and catch her myself if that's what it takes to get her back here."

"How does that solve anything? Don't you think that's just going to make things worse?"

"Auugh!" Dawn shrieked, knowing he was right. "I can't just do nothing, Brock. I don't work that way!"

Their argument screeched to a halt as Max joined them in the hallway, emerging from his room, rubbing one eye. He had a look like someone had grabbed him from both ends and wrung him out. Vacant somehow of all those properties he'd seemed so stuffed with just a few days ago. He looked at both of them, sucking in a breath, as though that would help him stand taller, and look a little more normal. Raltz, peaking around the edge of his leg, did the same. "Hey", he offered, pushing his glasses a little further up the bridge of his nose.

"Er, hey." Dawn managed

"Hey bud." Brock mumered, trying not to look clandestine.

"Well?" Max asked, obviously talking to Dawn, but unwilling to make direct eye-contact. They noticed he was bedecked in his traveling gear, even though they'd all conceded to going to bed. "Arent we going?"

Brock groaned. "You heard all that, huh?"

"I'm nearsighted, not hard of hearing." Max said with a sigh. "You don't need to argue with each other. I was going to go on my own after you two fell asleep."

Brock made a face, wondering just how Max had hoped to pull off a twelve hour trip before they woke up and came looking for him, but Dawn let out a little cheer, and grabbed Max by both shoulders before he could ask. "We're gonna bring Onix back together, alright?" she assured.

Max looked at his feet, then looked up at her. He couldn't deny that he was thankful that Dawn was so ardent and optimistic, but, that just wasn't how it was all going to work out. Onix wasn't coming back. She'd jumped on the opportunity to part ways, and things had never quite gotten right between them. There had been understanding, maybe even willingness to cooperate between then, but never friendship.

That wasn't exactly an easy pill to swallow, but he needed to get past it. Max needed pokemon he could count on, and Onix... Well, he just needed to see. Maybe it was a spiteful thing he was doing, but he just needed to go there and see Onix one more time, to know that it wasn't him who was the one who'd failed to meet the grade. He'd done the best he could! How much better could Onix do without him, and why did he feel so terrible when Onix had essentially been the one who'd forced him cut her loose?

Maybe there was a little piece of him that hoped that their split could be on more amicable terms, and that part was truly thankful for Dawn's upbeat attitude, even if it was misguided. That was probably why he didn't contradict her, outright. "Let's go then."

* * *

Ash felt himself rubbing the back of his neck, once she'd asked for her favor, feeling uneasy. "Shut down the Kanto Radio Tower?" As far as reciprocated favors went, that one seemed fairly extreme.

"Yes." Sabrina replied evenly, feeling a moment of impatience before she remembered that not everything was so obvious to Ash. She decided not to explain, however. "You'll need someone else's help to do it."

That much seemed fairly obvious, since he didn't know the first thing about radio signals, or anything of that sort. He got the feeling that he was being asked to do something that would prove far more difficult than the straightforward request made it seem. He opened his mouth to explain just that, but then closed it again at her expression, realizing that she already understood how clueless he was about how he'd fulfill her request.

"Whose help?" he asked, instead of any of the obvious questions, of which there were many.

Sabrina leaned back in her seat, and if Ash didn't know any better, he might've imagined Sabrina suppressing a shudder. "You already know two of them. A third and somewhat more integral one will come later."

Ash tried to think of people who made him want to shudder. He could tell from the suddenly sympathetic look she gave him that the two which first sprang to mind were certainly the ones she was talking about. When she gave a further piteous glance at him, then over his shoulder, he knew his fate was sealed.

The young trainer swerved in his seat a little to avoid Doc's meaty hand coming down to clap onto his shoulder, but it only put him well into noogie range of Holiday, who was quick to take advantage of Ash's short haircut by grinding gloved knuckles into his vulnerable scalp. "Hows my favorite little turd been? Did you miss me while I was gone?"

"Like hell I would. Get off!" Ash hissed in response. Instead of thrashing to get free, he reached up and grabbed a hold of Holiday's earlobe, twisting viciously in a bid to force the admin to relent.

Doc watched the brutal stalemate go on for many long seconds, each party spitting whispered insults at one another, too stubborn to back down, even as tears were beginning to well in the corners of their eyes. Just when he thought that either Holiday's ear was about to get wrenched off in a gush of blood, or Ash would have permanent furrow worried into his skull, the girl Ash had been sitting with spoke up, drawing a cease-fire.

"I'll leave you to it then," she said, reaching out and setting her hand over the one hand Ash didn't have vice-locked to the side of Holiday's face. She didn't even seem to notice the two others standing there. "I'll be in touch."

Without explanation, she withdrew her gear, popped the uppermost button of her jacket and snapped an incomprehensibly sultry photograph of herself, with smoldering eyes, and angle adjusted for maximum visible cleavage down her casually opened collar. Without asking him what his number was, she sent the picture message and felt his own gear buzz in his pocket. She was a psychic, he realized, she didn't need to know his number to call him.

Ash stammered a response, but Sabrina tucked herself out of booth, and was halfway out the door before he could string two words together. He let go of Holiday's ear and was then relinquished in kind. Unseen behind Ash's back, the admin cradled his purpling ear, and made a silent grimace of anguish, but Ash for his part, didn't even acknowledge the raw streak on the top of his head. Instead, the trainer watched Sabrina go, obviously troubled.

Doc wisely did not comment to either party. Pikachu, oddly, didn't seem to notice the two goons, and went about his business of lapping at the ketchup bottle left unguarded. Holiday, with none of the tact anyone else present possessed, and twice the belligerence, commented without hesitation. "She's cute, I guess. Not a complete dog, at least. I think you're a little too young for her, though."

Ash turned, his irritation plain, though he was confused as well. "Too young for what? What are you talking about?"

Doc, bolstered by his partner, felt it was safe to join in on the ribbing. "He means she wants the D."

"Totally." Holiday high-fived his cohort, while Ash tried to piece that puzzle together.

Once it hit him, Ash blanched, and straightened in his seat. "You guys are gross."

"You're the one she's sending cheesecake to, Ash." Doc countered, finally taking a moment to slide into the booth across from their teenage mark.

"Yeah, old girl red, back in Cerulean? She's gonna be _pissed_ if she finds out," Holiday noted, sliding in beside his hulking companion. He frowned momentarily at the hardboiled egg, before pushing the cup aside, with an extended index finger in plain distaste. Doc, however seemed more than happy with it, and shelled it with rapacity before stuffing it into his mouth.

Ash didn't bother to remark further on the subject, since it was so far outside of the realm of credibility. He'd had enough experience in rising to the bait when someone was obviously trying to provoke him, that he recognize the crack about Misty for what it was. His rivalry with Gary had given him that much, at least. A little age and temperance didn't do much to ease his irritation, but he could still take a little satisfaction from the bluish bruise on Holiday's ear, and that was enough that he didn't need to pop off at the mouth.

"What do you two want?"

Ash was beginning to regard them as a strange sort of malady, to be honest. Like a fever blister that cropped up every so often, and simply had to be coped with until it went away, since any effort to drive them off just seemed to exacerbate the problem. They were like Team Rocket in that way, he supposed-though he hadn't actually seen those three goons in months now. He wondered what they were getting up to. Hopefully bothering someone else, since he certainly didn't need Team Rocket showing up and adding to his problems, with these two still around. Honestly, though, Team Rocket was a more simple problem to deal with, even if their antagonism was more overt. He almost missed them. Almost.

"Oh, nothing much." Doc mused aloud. "Just killing time before the show tonight."

Annoyingly, Holiday didn't even bother to wait for him to inquire the details, which was probably the admin's only real option, since Ash was sure he didn't give a damn either way. "Donphan. Tonight. Mudkip Cellar Theatre," he explained, as though the statement carried great weight. "You're coming, right?"

"No. I've seen a Donphan before, moron. I own one." Ash snorted, trying in vain to finish his burger without further interruption.

"Not _a_ Donphan. _Just_ Donphan. Donphan the band." Doc explained. "Yanno, Donphan." It seemed like this was something he couldn't believe Ash wasn't aware of. In fact the very notion of it seemed distressing to Doc, which Ash assumed was probably due to the fact that Doc always seemed to be the last to know anything about what Holiday was up to, and couldn't believe it was someone else this time. "My bro snagged us all backstage passes."

Not letting on that he had no idea what Doc was talking about, since he knew it would just draw him further in, the young trainer shrugged. "No thanks." Ash muttered around the kaiser roll stuffed in this mouth. "Not interested."

Holiday didn't seem all that bothered, even as Doc gave him a look that conveyed his doubts in the plan. There was still an ace up the lanky admin's sleeve, however. "You know their lead guitarist was runner up against Paul in the Sinnoh League finals, right? Daniel Ichabod Malinois? Danimal the Animal?"

Ash flinched, and sat rigid in his seat. It was only after a few seconds of him bucking in the seat and slapping the table that they realized he was choking again. A huge-handed slap across his back from Doc got him talking and breathing, though it was mostly in breathless insults and dark murmurs.

He wasn't about to deny that he wanted to meet with that person, to learn everything he could about that league finals encounters, but still, he didn't think hanging out with Doc and Holiday on any level that could be considered "social" was a wise idea. That said, it wasn't like he had much choice. Sabrina wanted him to go with them, for whatever reason, and it was pretty obvious that he wasn't going to get a battle out of her until he did.

He massaged his brow with both sets of fingertips and tried to ease away a malingering sense of dread. He managed that much, but the irritation remained.

_"Fine."_

* * *

**A/N:** So there it is. I'm gonna keep steaming through this next bit, which I'm pretty stoked about. I hope everyone will still be here once I get it all finished up!


	22. Chapter XXII

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Pokemon. I also don't own Point Break, or Mastodon. Congrats if you spot the references.

**Chapter Summary:** Ritchie has a heart-to-heart with Silver, but will it set him straight or just raise more questions? Ash's birthday party kicks off in a strange way, while Ein begins to suspect something is amiss aboard the Explorer One, and what in the heck are Doc and Holiday up to at Silph Co.?

**A/N: **Well, time and inspiration finally came together and made this possible. I'm hoping that it will keep right on rolling for a while, but we'll see how it goes. Happy Holidays, everyone!

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XXII**

"At Day's End, The Night Begins"

Ritchie finished his explanation, a bit helplessly. He didn't see as how he had anyone else he could really talk to about it, but talking to Silver certainly wouldn't have been his first choice if he had. It was awkward enough talking to someone twice or more your age about a sexual escapade, fumbling over embarrassing words and total lack of real experience, but when their wife was standing not too far off, pretending unconvincingly that she couldn't hear what was being said, that just made it all the more uncomfortable.

"...I dunno. I'm just not sure what to do." He finished lamely, more thankful for the opportunity to stop talking than to finally get it off his chest. He ground the toe of his sneaker into the slowly bobbing deck of the cruise-liner.

Normally, he would have taken the long trip out to the archipelago on an island-hopper or a cargo-ferry since it was dirt-cheap and too far to travel on the back of a Pokemon. He didn't care so much about provisions or accommodations, but Lance had made it quite clear that a new day had dawned for Ritchie. The League was fronting his travel cost and then some, and the financial rep he'd spoken with over the phone to make the arrangements had done nothing but insist that he make himself comfortable, in spite of the fact that the whole situation was making him increasingly uncomfortable.

Silver worked his mouth around a little, annoyingly trying to try hide to a grin. "So this girl and you aren't together, then?"

Ritchie shrugged. "I really don't think so, no."

"Hasn't asked you to be her boyfriend or anything like that?"

"I just said no, man!"

"She doesn't even want to cuddle or anything?"

Ritchie made a face, "Sheesh, Not as far as I can tell."

"Wow." Silver muttered. "And she gives you a BJ in a janitors closet. Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Silver harrumphed, and crossed his arms. "I'll be honest with you kid-ow-I'm not really sure what you're-oh-complaining about. Sounds like you're coming away with the bigger-ouch-end of the stick, to be honest." Deliah elbowed him two or three times during his sentence, and each one softened some of the disapproval in his voice, but nevertheless, his condescending tone remained. His wife made a frustrated sound but Silver mostly ignored it.

Ritchie tried not to laugh, not finding it all that funny beyond sheer slapstick. He looked overboard.

The sea beat against the high-rise hull almost lazily, in that way that great and powerful forces of nature sometimes do, quietly opportune, and with heavy insistence. The Saint Anne II was a huge ship, but this sea had sunk her namesake without trouble, and that must've reminded the vessel of her grandiose mortality. She cut a straight, modest course out to the archipelago, though the sky was clear in all directions.

Ritchie blew out an exasperated sigh." Well forgive me for not being a sex-driven animal."

Silver smirked, smiling for both Deliah's benefit and Ritchie's. "It's got nothing to do with that. All I'm saying is don't try to complicate a good thing."

Ritchie shook his head. "Is it a good thing, though?"

"You tell me. You like what you got going on?"

He thought about it. He really did feel like he was enjoying himself most of the time when he was around Uranium. She was cool and funny, and sharp. She was a great battler, and had interesting stories to tell. She had a lot of guts and she didn't seem to care what anyone thought of her and she was even sort of attractive if you looked at her from the right angle and came into it with the right expectations, though that was rather far down the list of traits he had in mind. She was fun and dynamic and what was more, she was interested in him, at least on some level.

But then there was that other stuff. The crazy stuff that he couldn't quite place. They were having sex with each other in no uncertain terms, now. Once was an accident, twice was something else, after all. He didn't hate it, quite the opposite of that, in fact. It was by and large the most amazing thing ever. The problem was that it brought on all these uninvited questions.

Uranium didn't mind it either, apparently, but it didn't seem like she cared all that much about being with him romantically. It didn't seem like she cared about much of anything, except battling and getting what she wanted, the way he saw it. It just seemed like something that would've come up. You didn't fuck somebody's brains out, then tell them you liked them. Things just didn't work that way, so he had to wonder whether it was because she just wasn't interested in that level of relationship at all, or it was because she just wasn't interested in that level of relationship with him. Did she want to keep things simple, or was she still playing the field? Was he being used like a toy, played into some emotional plank-walk, or was this just casual, meaningless sex between friends?

He just felt like there should've been something more to it. Or at least, he wanted there to be.

But, he supposed, it was a little selfish, not to mention unrealistic, to assume that he was the only guy who'd ever been with her. With the way Uranium worked him over, he just didn't believe that could be true. Still, it did make a certain miserable feeling of disgusted jealousy and inadequacy roil in his gut, thinking of the guy who must've taught Uranium all those moves, instilled in her such a boldness and confidence through repeated and direct tutelage. Someone bigger and stronger and smarter and better looking than he was. The old flame, the ex-boyfriend, someone who'd had everything he was having and more, and who would always shadow him no matter what this relationship became, because he'd been there first

He closed his eyes, and tried to forget thinking about that. It didn't go away immediately, so he tried to picture something absurd in place of the shadowy figure hunched low, pumping away at Uranium while she moaned and gasped in a way she never had and likely never would with him. Something like a profusely sweaty Champion Lance. That made him laugh a little, but it brought it's own flavor of jaundiced thought, and so he mentally swapped Lance's face for a Stunfisk's, it's wide, vacant eyes curved slightly in a brainless smile. That did the trick. He hummed out a staccato of chuckling laughter, and moved on.

The fact of the matter, as near as he could figure it, was that he must've been a total pig. A part of him-a very convincing part of him-didn't give a damn one way or another. That part of him would throw caution to the wind nine out of ten times, and the rest of him, muddled and confused and even borderline paranoid as it was, would never be enough to stop it, once it got going. It made him feel like a bastard, but there was always going to be the risk of their current relationship coming to an abrupt end, counterbalanced against the remote gains he might find if he tried to progress any further with Uranium. He could keep his mouth shut and go right on making it with an older girl, no questions asked, or he could raise a fuss and wind up with nothing.

He scratched the side of his face, and tried not to look too pleased about the conclusion he'd come to, since in actuality, he wasn't.

"I guess I'll get it figured out," he professed, though he wasn't sure when or how, or really even why he would particularly want to. "Maybe it's not exactly good, but it's not so bad, either."

Silver smiled and puffed out his chest, as though prideful in the job he'd done of laying Ritchie's fears to rest in spite of the fact that he'd done no such thing.

"So where are you off to?" Silver asked in a way that made it bluntly apparent that he already knew. In fact, he could already see Silver examining the ragged edge of torn letter protruding from his cobalt blue jacket.

"My new Gym, I guess." Ritchie explained, halfheartedly.

"Ah, yeah. Heard about that." Silver said, with a wink.

Not knowing what to make of that, Ritchie decided to be frank. "Hey, can I ask you another question, Silver?"

"Sure." The tall, brick-built man slumped down a bit to join Ritchie at the rail, though there was little that Silver could do to match Ritchie's forlorn expression."But if its got anything else to do with blow-jobs, the wife is gonna take my head off." Deliah, forgetting that she wasn't supposed to be listening, began to huff in her defense, then fell silent with a blush.

"I just..." Ritchie sucked in a measure of bolstering air, chest expanding. Silver had been a pretty good friend to him, and so it was difficult to lay the question out. He didn't want to sound harshly objecting, but it was getting about to the point where this needed to be said. "I just wanna know if you've been pulling strings here. I want to make it on my own steam, and I can't help thinking that I wouldn't have gotten this on my own. I need to know how much is me, and how much is...well, you."

Silver blinked. "Me?"

Ritchie flushed a bit, but persisted. "Just be straight with me. That's all I'm asking. I know good and well I'm not the same caliber of trainer as some of those people who were there interviewing at Indigo Plateau, not by a long shot. Was it really me who earned this, or was it you whispering in Lance's ear?"

Silver rocked back onto his heels, some of his bravado sapped. "So that's what this is about, hmn?"

Now it was Silver who looked into the distance, past the cut and crush of the South Kanto sea, to the verdant isles of the Archipelago, simple slivers of hazy green horizon. "Look, half-pint," Silver held a hand out in front of him, as though indicating a vague something, a quality of the world that was plainly obvious in his eyes. "Sometimes, the world isn't fair, right? Well, most people forget that there are two sides to that."

"You take a leg up, and by necessity, it's at someone else's expense. The road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that crap." Silver kept staring ahead blankly, as though this wasn't quite something he could dredge up without defocusing himself. "The point is that there's always someone who's gonna have the advantage, no matter what. There's no reason to feel guilty when that person is you, you know."

Ritchie sighed. "I suppose not." He found that Silver's answer didn't really do much to satisfy him. "I guess it would just be nice to know that I had earned at least some of this on my own. I'm not just getting all this because I'm a friend of Lance's friend, am I?"

"Friend?" Silver shrugged. "I guess that's one way of looking at it." The older man sighed deeply. "If it makes you feel any better, kid, I can tell you this; I have known Lance for a very, very long time. He doesn't do anything but what he damn well pleases. I put the word in his ear about bringing you to training camp, but where it's gone from there, that's all you, half-pint. You're running the Cinnabar Gym now because evidently he liked what he saw. Either that or you've got the sharpest interviewing skills I've ever heard of," he finished with a guffaw.

"I definitely don't think it was that." He'd spent more of the actual interview stammering and telling tangential stories out of nervousness than anything useful, he felt like.

"Then all I did was make sure you were in the right place at the right time."

Ritchie sucked in a breath and stood straight from the railing. It did make him feel a little better to hear that much at least. It didn't ease his confusion any, but at least he felt like he was standing on his own two feet again, to some extent. "Thanks, Silver."

"Hey, what are friends for, right?"

"Right." Ritchie nodded. "I'll see you around."

Silver nodded in farewell at Ritchie's departure, and spun to recline against the rail in the warmth of the sunset. Deliah, now inching a bit closer, bumped softly against his arm. "He seems...nice." Deliah tried to mentally shunt the contents of the boy's conversation with Silver out of her mind. "He reminds me a lot of our boy."

Silver lifted both eyebrows in evaluation, and then shrugged. "In his way. I doubt Ash is making time with older girls in custodial closets though."

"If he's anything like you were at that age, then no. I'm not even sure you knew what a girl was when you were fifteen." Deliah felt as though, even as she were saying it, that she was this close to pulling out the small, prepaid gear she'd bought for the trip, punching out Ash's number lickety-split, and rattling off any number of parental fore-warnings on the subject, regardless. She'd raised Ash to have a strong moral compass, but a mothers worries were, as they said, never done.

Silver snorted. "Pap always used to say that Ketchum men were fighters, not lovers."

Deliah, commenting with only a murmur, leaned softly against him, trying not to let her smile seem a sad as those words made it feel.

* * *

Roxie licked the back of her teeth, looking for some lost particle of the dissolved tab, hoping for one last push before they hit the stage. She was sweating, and her hands felt clammy, but it wasn't nerves. She'd played thousands of shows in as many places. She'd screamed at the crowd, and clawed the soul out of her bass guitar everywhere from Almia to Kalos. She feared no one and nothing when she was on stage.

Her mouth was empty. She blew out a sigh, and thumbed her belt, irritated. A show was a special thing, and doing them straight-edged just didn't feel right anymore. A long, long time ago it had been about something different, she supposed, but now it was just about the feeling. That was what kept her on the bus, these days.

"Doin' alright?" Ollie asked, looking up from what he'd been doing; palm-muting through a few practice phrases. His half-assed smile said that he was trying to disguise distress and perhaps a bit of contempt with offhanded concern. That, or he was back to doing that thing he always did when he felt himself getting the cold shoulder, which was often.

She looked back at him blankly. "I'm sorry, did you say something, scab?"

Ollie's brows furrowed up in that squiggly, injured way that reminded her just how young and naive he was. Ollie was still just a fill-in, in her eyes, even though she and Dan had hired him almost seven years ago. Still in his late teens; he'd been a high-school drop out back then. Just a baby, practically. "I'm never going to be Billy Jo-" he began, with a miserable look, but she cut him off.

"Right. You're not. Piss off, then." She hissed, fishing around in her leathers. She popped another blotter, and washed it back with a mouthful of gin, paper and all. Ollie shut up, or at least if he didn't she couldn't hear him through the blur. She wiped drool out of the corner of her mouth, and hit the stage, gait long and loping, eager to begin, and eager to forget the name Ollie had just forced her to hear.

She couldn't have said how the first song went. She remembered hanging from the microphone by both hands, howling so loud that her throat felt bloody, and ripping at the thick coiled bands of nickel plated steel on her bass guitar in what felt like just the right way. The crowd loved it, so it didn't make a difference if she got it wrong or not. All that mattered was the energy; the rush, the sweet seconds of flight where she felt her feet leaving the ground, and not knowing for sure whether she would come back down again, or not.

She didn't start really engaging in what her body was doing until they were re-tuning for the second set, since they beat their instruments so fucking hard that they went flat if they didn't keep up with it. While she twisted the knobs, and searched for her harmonics in the middle of the cacophony, she watched the room. She let her fingertips brush all those outstretched hands, and searched without really searching. Pretty faces, ugly faces, every emotion in disconnect, all hidden behind a mask of excitement and energy. Masks, yes, but feelings very much real, just like her own. Temporary relief brought on by collective insanity, from an otherwise melodramatic and empty lifestyle. The people in the crowd were just little bubbles on a pill-pack, all the little faces just mismatched tablets of colors and shapes she didn't recognize or concern herself.

Nothing mattered, and they knew it just the same as she did. Nothing but this moment; nothing but her and them. Afterward, they could all go back to their hollow little lives with nothing in them, but now-right now-they had this morsel of simple wholeness by elimination. She looked for Holly in the crowd, his face a giant pale tab cast in the same dull orange bulb-light as everything else. He was with two other pills, packed into the corner, watching, waiting to be popped loose and gulped down with water and who knew what else..

Was his little pill-life just like hers?

She didn't care. She just wanted to crawl inside this moment, hollow it out and live there. Forever. She felt like this every night, in series of tens and hundreds. Tours and shows, and events were just select-a-size prescriptions for a type of anxiety that had no name and no permanent cure, simple pharmacy bottles of road-sickness and wanderlust taken in equal, easy-to-swallow portions with warning labels ignored completely.

She didn't care if anyone was meeting her halfway. She didn't care if there was another lost person out there, screaming, crying for release, desperate for ventilation that only the rumble and crash could give them. She only cared that she could use them for a while, and if they used her for a while, then that was good too. Whatever kept the world turning.

When she slumped low over her bass and hit an E so low it made her teeth buzz, it was a wordless promise to stay just a little bit longer; an oath that she would share a little more time with them all in this perfect moment of surrender. She pointed to no one, threw her hair back and roared from so deep inside that it made her eyes water. The whole crowd jumped and roared and thrashed and beat the place up from the inside out, gnashing and crashing and thrashing like it was the end times. To her it was all a blur again, happening like anger and passion and the deepest wrenching feelings of regret, like the best break-up sex of her life. Her and the crowd having that one last fuck before they threw each other out on the street; a hard, insistent rutting that ground deep inside her and hit a place that she couldn't touch on her own: pounded it until it was sore and then dumped cum all over it and left it for dead. They made the most of that hour.

And then it was over.

Roxie left the mic tingling, feeling wasted and abused and sick, but pleased with herself like a murderer after the kill, hands sore and mouth running, knowing that soon the euphoria would fade, but still unwilling to let it go. She glided off the stage on air suspension, and dumped a bottle of liquor in her face the second she found one. She didn't care that most of it didn't find her mouth. Instead she whipped her head back and forth and laughed, feeling the roll evening out and loving it in it's last few death-throes of distorted depths and fuzzy sensations, even as her eyes and nose stung from the ethanol.

Ollie glared. "You missed the change-up in Shelders That Move."

She coughed and probably said something, but she didn't give half a shit what it was. It was probably true, but she didn't care. She felt her way past him like a piece of furniture in a dark room, burbling out some vague dismissal. Her mouth leaked a thin string of juniper spirits and slobber, and she wiped it with her fingertips then smeared it across his cheek, with a belly laugh that felt like an orgasm.

Ollie flinched, and even Nicky barked out some rebuke that hit her like water down a waxed windowpane, but she simply turned a pirouette to the door, feeling somehow both sluggish and graceful at once as she did so. Dan, though, didn't even look up, just took a seat on the greenroom couch and dug out his electric metronome. He plopped it on the table, and took to his guitar like nothing else interested him and somehow that bothered her more than any dumbshit aggro she was catching from the rest of them.

Her ire kicked up hard, and she leaned against the door-frame expectantly. "Oi, aren't you gonna say something, Danimal?"

Dan's fingers worked the neck so fast that there hardly seemed to be any substance to them, just an extension of thought that fretted and hammered and bent at the strings, somehow faster than the sound they coaxed out of the guitar. He ran through his scales from major to minor, riffed a little in aeolian, switched to diatonic off a borrowed chord, seemed to almost lose his way in a strange modal myxolidian lick, then brought it all back together into a blues progression that was far more soul than his otherwise blank expression might've suggested. He glanced up when he was finished with the compositional thought and shrugged. "What's left to say?"

She showed him two fingers, expression flat, and left it at that.

She rolled off the wall and out into the hallway, hitting the restroom on her way there. She watched herself in the mirror for a while, feeling her anger ebb, but feeling a slight feeling of depression creeping in to replace it. She washed her face, and did a little bump off the busted rim of the sink to calm her down. Holly was an an acerbic little bastard, and he'd certainly pick up on it, if she looked like she was upset.

She hit the floor of the club, her stride unbridled and fearless, nudging a few little pill-people out of her way to get to that corner table, hollowed and immune to everything life could throw her way. The illy made you feel that way- Invincible. Incredible. Like you couldn't be drowned out or diluted, that everything you touched turned to gold-plated platinum with cherries on top.

She didn't need the crowd anymore. Then again, when she wasn't on stage she didn't have any real personal need for them anyways, and she neither knew nor wanted to know whether they had any for her, in kind.

Holly, poor sap, seemed mostly interested in his transceiver, from where she could see, slinking and sliding through the crowd like a greased Eelektrik, and Doc was eyeballing a girl somewhere off to his immediate left whom Roxie couldn't see directly.

A third individual whom she didn't recognize seemed like he was still watching the show, enraptured by the now empty stage, glimmering eyes still seeing the strobe lights flash and the noise of the band still rampaging through his abused little ears, where all around him was only dimness and murmurer conversation.

His was a pierced look, one that she'd seen before. A look of someone who'd been rocked, thoroughly, and to the bone. Deeper maybe, if you believed in that sort of thing. She wondered if she could still make that face; still be so in awe of something that was so much pageantry and empty air, without substantial help from a substance. Probably not.

Nobody noticed her glow on the way over, so she slid in beside the third one, realizing as she got closer just how young he really was. No wonder, she mused. He's probably just out of diapers. "Like what you saw, then, luv?"

Ash blinked, glanced over, didn't seem to realize who he was talking to, then looked back to the stage. He frowned, unsure really if he wanted to answer that. He was loathe to admit that he even found something that Doc and Holiday seemed to enjoy remotely interesting-and he wasn't certain even with that put aside that he wanted to say he'd liked it-but it was just so...

When he tried to separate it all into aspects that he liked and disliked, the question he was asking himself became more how could anyone like that part? rather than which parts in particular he enjoyed. He tucked in his bottom lip and clicked his tongue a few times against it, hoping that it would prompt him toward some realization, but it didn't. He'd begun to recognize her as the same woman he'd seen on stage now, and he didn't exactly want to spit on her performance, but...

The guitars were either high and waily and shrill or so low and rumbly and muddy that they were borderline repulsive. The big thick bass strings didn't make enough recognizable noise to be plainly heard over the guitars and so they just filled up all the space in between with a clutter of sound. The drums were so fast and thunderous that they didn't seem to keep time at all, and all she'd done throughout the whole thing was scream and shout and growl and snarl and holler so loud that it made his throat feel sore. Still, altogether it had somehow amounted to something that was vastly superior to the sum of it's parts. After all, he'd sat and watched it all happen for over an hour, without becoming anything he might call disinterested.

Still, music wasn't supposed to be that way, based on everything he knew. Music on the radio certainly didn't come close. Not that he'd never developed much taste for it, really. He'd never taken music lessons, he found most of the music his mother listened to on the old record player fairly repugnant, and he had never really had any interest listening to music simply for it's own sake. He'd always been too busy to just listen to music. Listening to music took idle time, of course, and he made a point of never having any of that to spare.

Somehow, though, everyone here had found some way to enjoy it. Not just tolerate it, but really, honestly enjoy it. Even Holiday, who otherwise had no interest in anything that didn't make someone else look like a fool, had sat and rapidly nodded his head, eyes squinted in appreciation of some of the more densely packed segments. Surely to Arceus he wasn't the strange one here. That said, he didn't think he could be the only normal one either.

Had he liked it? It had swept him up in that same sort of way, with him tapping his thumb on the table as much in spite of himself as anything else, he supposed, but it just seemed so abrasive, so unlikable when he thought back on it.

"It was loud," he said, after a time, once he realized that was all he could say specifically about it.

"First metal show, innit?" Roxie queried after a small bark of laughter.

He didn't get a chance to answer, as her laughter drew Holiday's attention.

"Hey, slut!"

Ash expected a fight, but Roxie only smiled and winked. "Holly, how are you, you rusty old cunt?"

They patted one another like old friends, which seemed odd to Ash, since Roxie looked so much older. Then again, maybe she wasn't. Though she was attractive in a sweaty and slightly septic-looking way, Roxie looked tired, worn out, rickety almost, but she also seemed like an imported super-car, in that she clearly appeared purpose-built for self-abuse. Holiday, on the other hand, didn't bust a grape if he didn't have to, and was more like an economy coupe in that regard.

When Doc issued his own backward sort of insult-welcome, he knew that it was more than just presumption. The years between them were not that great, maybe only just one or two, but the mileage had been much harder on Roxie.

Holiday was still in his early twenties if he was guessing right, and Doc seemed to be younger than him, still. Although, that may have just been the healthier living. He wondered what the story was here, but the Corps had taught him that it was usually easier to shut your mouth and open your ears, than go asking dumb-ass questions, so he decided to sit quietly and listen, and heard everything he needed to know as they yammered on. It didn't take long at all to understand that this had to be the third person Sabrina had been talking about.

"Arceus, I haven't seen you since you graduated, Doc, how's your precious little sister?" Roxie opened, offhandedly.

Doc didn't skip a beat, frowning disapprovingly at Holiday. "I don't have a sister." He made a face at his partner, as if to say "Nice try."

Holiday let out a slightly dejected sigh and handed a fiver over to Roxie after fishing around in his pocket.

"I tried, Holly." Roxie offered with a moments guilt, before thrusting the fiver into her bustier.

Ash didn't get it, but he didn't bother to interrupt and Roxie went right on, unperturbed, pausing to wipe the corner of her mouth every so often with the back of her thumb. "And wot about you, Holly? Hows the research gig? The uh, internship, was it?"

"Never turned into anything. I told you that already." Holiday said with a shrug. "Working with a big firm in Orre right now. It pays the bills a lot better."

"Ah! So that would be proper work, then, eh? Always had you down for the mad-scientist type." Roxie said with a gush of laughter."All that futurist crap you was always going on and on about in school? You even did your thesis on it. What was it called again?"

Holiday cleared his throat. "Humanist Realization Through Aureology and Technology: A Purview of How Pokemon and the Machines We Build for Them Will Eventually Open the Door to the Next Stage in our Own Evolution, with foreword by A. Fennel Ph. D."

"Attaboy, Holly. There's mummy's little nutter," Roxie cooed.

Holiday only rolled his shoulders, but his knit eyebrows were as good an admission that she'd gotten to him as anything. Doc, perhaps, being the biggest indication of all, sat back hard into his seat, letting Ash know that this was out-of-bounds territory. "What about you?" Holiday shot back in acidic tones, after licking his teeth. "Who's the doe-eyed chap-stick lesbian you got dipping their fingers into that axe wound of yours this year?"

Roxie pursed her lips, and shrugged, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Holiday scoffed. "Nah, not really. I'm sure whoever it is, you'll scare them straight again in a few months anyways," he concluded, twisting a knife somewhere, but Ash's couldn't even begin to say for sure what they were talking about at this point. Axe wound? He didn't see any cuts on Roxie at all! Why would someone put their fingers in an open wound? Ugh.

He decided now that it was time to speak up. Not about any of the crap they were talking about, because it all ranged from boring, to downright stupid, and he didn't want a fight to escalate and prevent him from having his chance to talk to this Danimal guy. He was going to ask about important stuff.

Because he'd been quiet, and held it in for so long, his words all ended up coming out in a deluge, though. "Hey, I heard some guy in your band is Sinnoh Top Two!" he blurted, excitement bleeding into his voice "He battled against Paul and I really want to talk to him about it."

Holiday and Doc both gave him a wide-eyed look, which had the fortunate side-effect of killing some of the tension, but it instantly put all of the attention on him, making him feel a little foolish.

"Uh, Holiday told me," he stammered, after a long moment. So much for being patient, he thought, but that was fine, so long as he got to meet the guy, and ask about Paul.

Roxie seemed to look him up and down, then. "Yeah, awrite." She smiled a little. "All of you wanna come, then?"

Holiday and Doc shared mixed expressions, but Roxie cut across all of them with a chirp. "Of course you do! Holly, I'm sure the boys would love to see you, especially."

"Uhn," Holiday responded, sounding a bit put out.

It was a bit unusual, at least to Ash. He'd expected the greenroom to somehow be better put together than the rest of the place, but where as the club itself seemed to have been built out of cinder blocks held together with only the crusted adhesive backing of band fliers, the private back room looked unfit to serve as a crack-den.

Everyone was seated knees to elbows in a busted nylon hounds-tooth corner-couch stained so sickly yellow with myriad beer-stains that it seemed like it was about ready to throw up the contents of a thousand loose pockets, it no doubt held in it's gangrenous interior.

A billiards table had been converted into an oversize cocktail table by having it's legs chopped off at the middle. A mirror, placed in the table's bed reflected the purple-tinted fluorescent bulb of an unshaded brushed nickel floor lamp amidst burnt melamine ashtrays, double-edge safety-razors and loose pocket change.

Ollie, penning in a composition book with only the guts of a smashed ballpoint pen, looked up, briefly glanced across the cadre that consisted of Ash, his two accomplices, and their escort, then looked back down. He wordlessly excused himself, tossing the notebook onto the table, with a loud flap of indignant finality, and then leaving through the adjoining bathroom.

Nicky, laying out a humongous roll on the practice pad strapped to his knee, gave a halfhearted wave of one stick, before noticing Holiday and going back to it without further comment. The frequency and intensity of the clacking pad went from gentle cadence to free-form fill, each beat on the plastic surface coming harder than the last.

Danimal didn't seem like he noticed anyone entering at all, but the set of his jaw did get a little tighter as he went on playing, eyes staring through the far wall.

Roxie winked, and elbowed Holiday glibly. "I told you they missed you, didn't I?"

Holiday only shrugged, but Doc spoke up, in a low whisper. "What's with the cold shoulder?"

Roxie chuckled. "Holly almost broke up the band once. Didn't he tell you?"

Doc glanced aside, as if to seek some answers, but Holiday was already shaking his head in dismissal. Ash didn't waste any time getting down to business. Ignoring the not so friendly reunion, he marched straight over to the lead guitarist and said his piece. "I heard you made it into the Sinnoh Top two, and I-"

"I don't do autographs." Danimal said plainly, not bothering to look up from his guitar-work.

Feeling snubbed, Ash closed his mouth, and just tried to size the man up. Dan or "Danimal" as he went by was not a tall man, being only a few inches taller than Ash, but his demeanor was that of an armored battleship. Powerfully constructed in meanly slanted lines, Danimal had a thuggish look that was only enhanced by the multitude of piercings and tattoos that covered him. A close inspection of the fingers he worked up and down the strings revealed the letters "F-A-C-E-F-U-C-K" tattooed on each digit, which didn't strike Ash a particularly welcoming culmination.

"I really just want to talk about battling Paul." Ash stated, trying not to look like he was intimidated.

With a snort, Danimal stopped and set his opalescent black guitar to one side, slinging it on the strap, neck down, output switch much like the safety of a rifle, clicked into the off position. He gave only the most brief glances of appraisal, before launching into his spiel. It sounded rehearsed. "What is there to talk about? I lost. That guy eats, breathes and shits battling, and there isn't a chance in hell of catching him. He's already too far along."

Ash blinked. "Too far?"

Danimal shrugged. "Math just isn't there."

"Math?" Ash was lost.

Danimal nodded. "Yeah. Think of it like this: Skill is an uphill struggle. Two things determine how fast a person ascends. One of them is practice, and the other is talent. Dedication, and resolve, even at one hundred percent still only moves you ahead at a set pace. Time moves forward at the same rate for all of us. That's a constant. Talent, however, puts you a cut above to begin with. Talent and Practice in the same body will always go farther than just one or the other. When you've got them both, the only thing left standing in your way is time. So it's a given that on a long enough stretch, you'll always come out on top. Paul is leaving every other competitive battler in the dust this season, and making up serious ground on his other contemporaries, and we're only just getting into the third month."

Ash just continued to look at him blankly, so for the sake of the argument Danimal picked up the downed composition notebook and tore a sheet out of it. On it he presented a line-graph with three tracks. One, the topmost, continued in a more or less straight line, across the X axis, labeled Time. He labeled this Champion Cynthia. The middle, line, which climbed rapidly up the Y axis labeled Skill, to surpass the other two on the far right. This line, he labeled Paul. Another line, which also presented a significant delta along the Y axis, Danimal labeled No Name Schmuck. Ash could not help but notice this line failed to surpass the middle one, even though it's slope was similar.

"Even if someone came along with just as much talent as him, he'd outclass them in terms of sheer experience, and there's nobody sitting pretty at the top who puts in even half the time that he does. Paul has it in the bag this year."

Behind him, Ash could hear Holiday and Doc murmuring with one another.

"Look at me, I know statistics, I must be some sort of super fucking genius." Holiday huffed. "Dickbag."

"He has a line graph, bro. I ain't ever seen you incorporate any graphs in your arguments. That's pretty compelling shit. I'm all about the visual aids."

Holiday, at something of a loss, conceded. "I see your point."

Ash, saying nothing, stood there, trying hard to take it all in, and not liking the conclusions that were being drawn one bit. He also resented the fact that he and Holiday were kind of in agreement.

"Though, if you're wondering, I don't think Paul does autographs either," Danimal added.

Before Ash could drum up the wherewithal to pursue his line of questioning, Danimal excused himself just as briskly as all the others. Ash took a minute to contemplate his frustration at that.

A month or so ago, that graph might've seemed like hard enough evidence that he was going to keep right on being a failure, and that there was no hope in sight of turning that around. The Ash he'd been a month ago wasn't all that different of a person, when it got right down to it. A softer, more naive version of the young man that stood here today, perhaps, Still, Ash had no doubt that version of him would've been feeling the gloom settle in right now. That had been a very blue period. Today, though, was a different matter. The Ash of today gathered that sheet up in his hands, crumpled it, and tossed it to the floor with a sidelong look of disgust.

He'd neither wanted, nor asked for some assessment of his chances. He didn't give a damn one way or another what anybody thought. If he stopped for even one single second to care what anybody else thought about his chances, than he may as well hand up his training shoes right now. Not even Sabrina, with all her certainty was going to change his mind, and she had as good as told him that he wasn't going to be able to continue being a Pokemon trainer. Psychic or no, he fully intended to make a fool out of her.

He'd sworn to Pikachu, to the rest of his Pokemon, and most embarrassing of all to Misty that he was Indigo-bound, and by Arceus, that was where the world was going to find him at the end of the year, no matter how hard it tried to stop him. No way he was gonna renege on a promise like that! Nothing was going to stand in his way; not this Aura crap, not predictions, and certainly not some stupid guitar playing douche-bag and his bullshit graph.

Still, he'd hoped the encounter with Danimal would give him somewhat more of an idea of what he was heading into. Ash wanted to know what battling Paul was like. How he'd competed at a championship level, what Pokemon he'd brought to the table, that sort of thing. Instead, all Danimal had given him was supposition, and ego-stroking. He knew Paul was a good battler. He knew Paul practiced just as hard as he did. He didn't need someone to tell him that Paul was a formidable opponent, he needed someone to paint a target for him to hit. He needed someone to give him a measure of what battling Paul was really going to mean, because he full well intended for that battle to happen.

"Man," Ash began, as soon as Dan had left the greenroom, forgetful of who was still listening, amidst his own personal thoughts. "Screw that guy."

Roxie though, evidently not offended, only slinked her arm around Ash's shoulder. "Well, now that the niceties are out of the way, and we've got the place all to ourselves, shall we?" She elevated an open palm toward the couch.

Ash didn't know what she meant exactly, but he shrugged and nodded. He needed to get himself into a position to ask her a favor anyways and as he'd already asked for one that had flopped pretty hard now, he figured it best to play it safe. He didn't particularly want to sit on the disgusting-looking couch, but he made sure to shrug up the hood of his sweater to protect his neck from any direct contact. He didn't think you could catch AIDS from a couch, but he wasn't entirely certain you couldn't, either.

Once he'd hunkered down, he tried to look more casual than he felt, propping one leg up on the wall of the billiard table. He turned to find Holiday and Roxie huddled together whispering below audibility, while Doc took a seat on the opposite end of the corner couch from him.

"What's that all about?" he asked, pointing with just his thumb. It had been hard for him to transition back to the normal method after coming out of the corps, but every time he pointed with his whole hand, people gave him strange looks. He felt a little unusual doing it the normal way in front of Doc, actually, since he'd been there alongside of him for most of it, in one sense or another, but he tried not to let it show.

Doc had no answer for him, evidently, and only shook his head. "Girl stuff, must be."

Ash snorted. "Must be."

Holiday and Roxie, their short conference ended, came to sit down beside them, Holiday beside Doc, as was his custom, and Roxie next to him, as was her preference, apparently.

Roxie reminded him of a homeless person, in certain ways. While she didn't really have an odor to her, he imagined it might've had a lot to do with the urine-smell of the room covering it up, as she looked quite un-showered. Her long white hair was purposefully styled to look like a complete Rattata's nest, rather than being a legitimate one, but the only distinguishing feature between the two was the amount of product that seemed to have went in to it. All of her features had a tired slant to them, and all the color in her face seemed more painted on than anything.

Still, there was a certain allure to her, by design. She had very big, expressive blue eyes, with thick, heavy lashes, and her nose was a small, button like thing that seemed oddly cute and childish by comparison to the rest of her. When she talked, she moved her mouth very deliberately, and her accent, not directly Kantonese, though she was speaking clearly enough for him to understand, was thick with argot. Even though she was a bit germy looking, she did seem almost inherently likeable.

Which must've been why it made his voice rise an octave or two when she slid a hand into the neck of his jacket, tracing a delicate line from his collarbone to his ear on his opposite side.."So, Holly says you and Doc are back from the army, luv."

He tried not to fidget under such a direct attempt to unnerve him, especially since he knew Holiday was involved but as she pawed him again, his stupid, hormonal body saw fit to shoot a surge of electric sensations down his side, from his neck to his kneecap. Worse yet, the knee-jerk reaction made him bow away from the touch as though he'd been tickled. Roxie winked and popped her eyebrows at the reaction villainously, as the curl only drove him involuntarily against her side.

"Not exactly," he squealed, trying plainly to adjust his seating, but she caught him under his closer arm and gave him a reassuring shake.

"Oh but you are a shy one, aren't you? I don't bite all that hard, I promise. So, wot, the Pokemon-" here, she glanced to the other two for confirmation, "-Corps was it? Must've been hard, yeah?"

Ash hunched a bit, but tried to keep his cool. He could see Holiday smirking at him, and he glared back, fumbling. "I guess," he answered, with just a little more solidity than before.

"Sounds like you and Doc could use a little celebration, then." She chided, giving him another little shake, and then letting him go, as he was obviously tensing up.

Holiday snorted, "Why Doc? He didn't even finish."

"Yeah, well, he never finishes anything." Roxie shot back derisively.

Doc began to protest that statement, but Holiday flashed him a wink, and he began to see what was going on. He let his objection taper off into a shrug. Roxie pawed at the patch on Ash's sleeve. "Not like you, luv. You're the genuine article."

Ash glanced down at that patch on his arm, protesting just a little more. In the end, his not exactlys and I guesses and even his It wasn't really how you thinks proved to be no match for Roxie's intense, forward adulation. "Well, I guess it was pretty rough," he admitted finally.

"Well, Tonight, luv, we party like it's your birthday."

Feeling a heat come to his face, both from her continual closeness, and from talking about himself so openly and casually, he couldn't help but laugh. "It'll make up for the one that I missed, then."

Roxie covered her mouth in a powerful caricature of aghast dismay. "You missed your own birthday in the Corps, did you? That calls for something really special 'en, don't it?"

She sprang up. "On your feet boys! We are on a mission! Tour party!"

Doc, and Holiday, much to Ash's surprise, were quick to answer that call, leaving him the lone occupant of the couch. He stood nervously.

"A-alright," he said, looking at Pikachu who was giving him an expectant, almost excited look, in spite of his own concerns. Ash sighed, almost sure that this would get him in trouble, whatever Pikachu seemed to think. He hadn't forgotten about Sabrina and her request. He hadn't forgotten about that Marsh Badge he was after, either. All the same, he couldn't really deny that a party in his honor did sound like fun. He'd have certainly picked better people to throw one for him, given the chance, but hey, who was he to look a gift Rapidash in the mouth? Nobody had laid down a time limit, or anything!

There was a pretty hopping night-scene in Lavender, with clubs and all night restaurants lining every street and dotting every corner. They walked from the Mudkip Cellar, which opened coincidentally into an alleyway that also contained a dimly lit cafe, and a heavily reinforced steel door next to which was an orange neon sign that read XXX Tattoo and Massage Parlor. From there, they were led across one of the main downtown thoroughfares by Roxie, who evidently had some notion of where they were going.

He and Pikachu were both mighty distraught when she bypassed one of those pizza joints where they brought your order out to your table on an electric toy train. There was one of those places in Viridian, and he remembered begging his mom to take him there for his seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth birthdays.

"Pii-Pikachu!" Pikachu cried, watching someone's piping hot pepperoni and olive pizza go by the window as they passed. Ash too looked on with interest. He wasn't particularly hungry or anything, but it got into the realm of true, unadulterated wonderment in a simple, yet simply awesome thing, and soon enough, he was right there with Pikachu, pressed against the glass, as Doc and Holiday passed him by.

He imagined their souls as crushed and shriveled as to not enjoy something so obviously amazing as pizza on a toy train. Surprisingly, it was Roxie who doubled back and stood beside him at the window. It was her strange, almost creepy quality that suddenly made him aware that he was standing there staring at a family of five, trying to enjoy their meal and enjoy one another's company, while two weirdos and a Pokemon looked on like dumbstruck vagrants.

"Sumfin' interesting'?"

Ash, eager to move on, shrugged his shoulders a bit, and tried to edge away. "Nothing, really."

"Fancy a slice, then?" Roxie asked, standing full upright again as she followed him, "Or was it the locomotive?"

Ash, not seeing why he should be shamed by it, admitted it openly once Pikachu took up beside him, nearly as reluctant to carry on as he seemed to be. "A little of both."

Roxie smiled, and chatted on a bit, telling an anecdote about a train ride she'd once took, while ahead, Doc and Holiday conferred in whispers.

"So what's the game plan, bro? When does all the corruption begin?" Doc queried, his nerves beginning to show. Something about Ash made him uncomfortable now, though he plainly seemed just as normal as he always had. Still, there was no denying that

Holiday clearly bored and disinterested, looked up from his transceiver. "Huh? Oh," the tall admin remarked, "that."

Doc frowned. "Yeah, bro, that. Yanno, the whole point of this?"

Holiday gave his partner an aggrieved look. "Please. I got this." Cupping his hands around his mouth, he hollered back. "Trains are for fags!"

Doc watched, as the damage unfurled, Ash recoiled, shouted back some unintelligible belligerence, and Roxie, sidled along side of him, did the same, beginning with a loud "Oi!"

Holiday nodded, as though that was according to plan. He kept on hollering. "Gotta handle some shit! Meet up at the Jam Dragon back in Saffron in two hours?"

"Whatever! Hitting the Drink Drank first, Holly. If you're not there we're starting without you." Roxie hissed.

Holiday turned away at that, catching Doc by the elbow, as he proceeded. "What the hell is going on with those two?" Doc asked as he fell into step beside him. "I thought you and Roxie were tight," the bulkier Admin commented, with a confused look.

Holiday let out a farcical villain laugh, complete with wiggling fingertips, before simmering back down to a more reserved state. "We are, bro. Tight as tight gets," he assured. "But the thing you gotta understand here, is that like any truly great actor, I never audition for lead roles."

Doc looked back over his shoulder toward Roxie and Ash, each bonding through their mutual-and in Roxie's case, apparently feigned- distaste for Holiday, viewing them in a new light. He rubbed his chin. "Are you sure this is gonna work, bro?"

Holiday, confident as he always was, gave his friend's beefy shoulder a pat. "So sure, in fact, that I've decided to follow up on something else the boss needs for a bit, and you know how much I hate to step away from a task half-done."

Doc supposed that was assurance enough.

"Where are we goin'?"

Holiday shrugged. "Silph Co."

* * *

"A 2nd hand clothing store? What're we here for? And why is it called the Drink-Drank? That sounds like something else."

The Drink-Drank was a sort of musty place, where harsh, washed-out overhead lighting beat down on the discarded remnants of bad wardrobes and department store overstock, lending everything a quality of retro-chique. Ash didn't want to say so, but he suspected this was the sort of place where people who still thought Fedoras were cool hung out.

Roxie shrugged, a little embarrassed. "Ah, well, the thing you gotta understand about us Unovans, luv, we don't give a damn about whether anything makes sense or not, so long as it sounds cool and exotic. An old acquaintance of mine, fashonista type by the name of Elesa, opened this place about eight years ago. Picked the name because she thought the words sounded good together. Poor dear couldn't speak a lick of Kantonese to save her life. She gave up on the venture when it business didn't kick off and the recession started back home, but the new owners kept the name when it stuck, I guess." She tutted. "Either way, we're just here to play a little game, is all. It'll elp you loosen up."

Ash grunted. "I don't need help loosening up."

"You're kidding right? I'll believe you when you stop looking like you've got an Old Rod jammed up your arse." She stepped in front of him and kicked the inside of both of his shoes lightly, dislodging a very rigid stance he didn't realize he'd adopted. "And at least bend your knees a bit, for fuck's sake." She plucked at his pant-legs a bit to help him with the effort.

Not done there she moved upward. "Alright now lets work on these arms."

He looked down at his arms. "What's wrong with them?"

"Nothing, if you're a Golurk." She grabbed his gloves and started wiggling his arms, like she were trying to furl out rolled up blankets. "Relax a little."

"I am relaxed."

"Really? Okay, then shake your bum, if you're so damned relaxed."

He looked at her blankly. "Bum?"

"You know, your bum. Your fanny. Your arse, Ash, wiggle your arse!"

Ash screwed up this features. "No." As far as he was aware, butt-shaking was not a thing that he did. Certainly not while being observed.

Roxie crossed her arms. "If you can't even shake your bum, then in what way are you relaxed?"

His face twisted up even more, but he tried to change the subject. "Why do you have that weird accent?"

"What accent?"

"That accent. I asked you why do you have that weird accent and you were like: Wat aksint?" he attempted in his best approximation, and found that it was spot on. "Plus you use weird words like Chivvy, and Dekko and Faff."

At least spot on enough that she seemed to understand what he was talking about. "Oh. Well, it's because I'm Unovan, luv."

Ash frowned. "No, I've heard Unovan before. That's something else."

"Oh you mean, how I speak real Kantonese. Almian Kantonese, where they don't have any of your silly brogue. You ever think maybe you're the one with the funny accent?"

"I don't have an accent."

"Ah down't haev an akseynt," she parroted back, mockingly. "You sound like your whole family ought to have one leg longer than the other from walking along the side of a hill."

"Hey!" Ash snarled, but Roxie only flicked him on the nose.

"Oh, relax, would you? I'm only muckin' about," she laughed. "It's just because I learned Kantonese before I came to Kanto. Someplace far away, where the language is spoken a bit different than they do here."

"Almia, huh?" Ash conceded. "I think I get it."

"Alright, then let's get back to these stiff arms," she said, working his sleeves in a double-dutch pattern.

"I thought we were on my butt."

Roxie laughed, her smile big and wide. "We can be." She reached a hand around behind him and he swerved away predictably to avoid having his ass grabbed. Instead of chasing him, she only stepped in the opposite direction so that he crashed into her once more, bumping into the body only just barely contained in her low-cut blue and purple striped tube dress. He scowled, but she laughed.

"We'll just work on the arms first, then," she contended, ignoring his ire. She flapped at his arms, rocking his elbows inside and out gently, first in unison, and then in an alternating pattern. She hummed while she did it, like it was a very normal task to air someone out like old bed-linen in a public setting.

After a while, she struck up conversation in a different direction. "So I was right, then? That was really your first metal show?"

Ash didn't really need to think about it. "Yeah."

Roxie smiled. "The look on your face said you weren't really sure what to think of it. You've had an hour or so to mull it over, now. What did you think?"

Ash tried to wipe his face clean. It seemed pretty rude to be so openly dismissive of something that obviously took a lot of talent. But then again, she did generally seem like she wanted an honest answer. Plus, she was starting to creep up his arm, and work her fingers into the fleshy spots on his shoulder, so he hoped his answer would shy her up some. "I sort of hated it."

No dice. She slid around behind him, and rubbed his back. It was a totally platonic thing, with her pushing from the middle of his back up to his neck like she was trying to clear away heavy debris, but it made him feel powerfully awkward, like he was about to giggle. He sealed his lips tight, knowing he'd black his own eye out of sheer embarrassment, if he did something like that.

"I think I did too," Roxie admitted.

Ash's brow arched, as he looked at her over his shoulder in a nearby full-length mirror. "Why?"

Roxie stopped for a minute, pausing with her hands just on the verge of his collar. "Oh, I dunno, really. It's just not as good as it used to be." She went back to rubbing. "We used to sound a lot different, you know? Back before we were Donphan. I always fancied myself more of a punk rocker than a heavy metal queen. Just sorta worked out that way."

Ash shrugged. "Well, what did you call yourself before?"

Roxie laughed, grabbing his sides. He squirmed, but tried not to wildly flail, since he knew she was trying to provoke him. "Before, we were Koffing and the Toxics. Different lineup, different sound. Not as technical, sure, but we still had a lot of fun."

Ash blinked. "I think I've actually heard a Koffing and the Toxics song."

"I'm not surprised. We were fairly mainstream. If you heard any song it was probably-"

"A Little Poison in Your Days, a Little Poison on the Stage!" they both said in unison.

He turned to look at Roxie as she belted out the lyrics to the song.

"A little poison in your days,

Nose running, influenza

Hot soup, sun's rays,

Have you feelin' better, I'm tellin' ya!

A little poison on the stage,

Heart beatin', eyes gleamin'

Loud music, break the cage,

Everybody in the crowd, stay screamin'!

Keep Koffin'!

Throat dry, cheerin' all night,

Stay scratchy, baby, that's all right,

Keep Koffin'!

Keep Koffin'!

Keep Koffin'!"

He remembered that song. It had been all over the radio just before he'd started his Pokemon journey. He smiled. It was a pretty cool song, though he guessed he could see why it would be hopelessly out of style now. At least he could understand all the words, and they didn't all blend together in one gravely snarl like everything she'd sang tonight. "I like that one."

"Yeah, me too. That's one of the few songs I wrote. Nick and Billy wrote most of them back then."

He thought back to all the individuals he'd seen earlier in the green room. "Which one of those guys was Billy again?"

Roxie winced, but tried not to let it show. "Uh, Billy was a girl, actually-Say, listen: Why don't we play that game, now?"

"Game?"

"Yeah, here's how it works. On the count of three, we both walk in opposite directions, and in ten minutes we come back to this spot, dressed in the stupidest outfit we can put together. The winner is whoever gets a laugh out of the other. Loser has to buy their their outfit and wear it out of the store.

Ash frowned very deeply. "You want me to play dress-up?"

Roxie didn't acknowledge his qualms, though, only shouted, "One-two-three-go!"

* * *

"Didn't you get fired from this place, bro?" Doc asked, grasping the chain link outside the main loading dock behind the towering facility.

Holiday snorted. "Yeah, right. Me, fired? That's rich." Feeling, after a moment that his partner needed further education on the subject, Holiday provided some. "I didn't get fired, I accepted severance in return for the cessation of my employment."

Doc puzzled it out, and then frowned. "How is that different from what I said?"

Holiday sneered. "Just hop the damn fence already, we need to get in here."

Doc cleared the fence in just a few stretches, navigating his way over the barbed wire deterrent without much trouble. He landed on the opposite side of the barricade with only a few minor scratches, and dusted himself off. He waited for Holiday, though the other admin plainly had no intention of duplicating the feat.

In fact, he barely looked up from his gear. "Now go in there and get a key-card for the gate, and let me in."

Doc frowned. "How am I supposed to do that? Ask nicely?"

"Do I have to do all the fucking leg-work, here? I'm the brains, you're the brawn, so make with the brawn already." Holiday snipped.

Doc rolled his eyes and spun, marching toward the doc entrance in a huff. "Oh, sure. I guess I should get us a couple of disguises while I'm at it, too. Suppose I'll just find two scientists on lunch-break, and bonk their heads together. Quick dive into the bushes, and presto-change-o..."

"Yeah, that sounds nice," Holiday said, after him, clearly no longer listening.

Doc sucked in a breath as he marched toward the door. As much as Holiday was putting him on, this was business, and business of their nature did demand a certain level of ruthlessness. Whatever he'd been before, Doc was a Team Heavy now, and so was Holiday, no matter how much he acted like a complete man-child. People who operated at their level within criminal organizations, as a rule, were a devious lot, and not terribly nice, besides. He liked to believe that it wasn't necessarily in his character, but he supposed a man needn't particularly enjoy the way he made a living in order to be good at it. He psyched himself up.

He picked up a box from the dumpster as he passed, unfolding it and popping it back into shape, along with a few others that seemed to more or less match it. He clutched the lot of them in front of himself, as he approached the door, and the alongside CCTV system. The boxes served as a sort of barricade that he hoped would prevent anyone watching through the camera from seeing his face. He pushed a button labeled "Please Press For Service" set into the panel, and waited.

The speaker crackled, and a mousey voice came through. "Yes, how can I help you?"

Doc hesitated. He hoped they'd just pop the door open. That seemed a little naive now that he thought it about it, though. The last time he and Holiday had strong-armed their way into a place like this, it had all been so easy. That guy from the poke mart had sorta struck him as a dope, though, so maybe it was to be expected. He cleared his throat, and tried not to sound so blatantly Sinnohan.

"Just droppin' off deeze 'ere uh..." he cocked his neck back and tried to read the labeling on the boxes. He struggled with the word. "Ar-dwee-no boards?"

There was nothing but silence for a long while, which had him second-guessing himself. He wondered if maybe he'd laid on the accent too thickly, or mispronounced the word Arduino. Much to his relief, however, whoever was on the other end popped open the door for him.

"Ah, shit, um, actually, do you think you could do me a favor?" said his unseen counterpart through the entry. "These are actually for a personal project, could you just leave them inside the door here? My supervisor will kill me if he finds out."

Doc thought for a second, trying to plan his move before he was actually forced to make it. He grunted, finally, shifting onto his back leg. "Sure, pal. Think you could gimme a hand, 'ere?" he asked, still unseen behind the boxes.

"Oh, sure, sure, I-OOUF!"

As soon as the dock worker took one of the boxes, Doc knew he would realize it was empty and the jig would be up. He didn't have time to put any Pokemon in play, so he threw his leading shoulder forward the second that happened and crashed into the door with all his weight, nearly crushing the much smaller individual in the door jamb. Doc clawed through the shower of falling, weightless boxes to clap a hand over the man's mouth, and muffle out the oncoming scream of surprise and pain.

A well aimed punch across the cheek and temple put the man down as quickly as possible, and hopefully before the guy could get an eyeful of him. He eased the limp body down to the pavement, and then peeked inside. The interior of the loading dock was well lit and more importantly empty, thankfully. Third shift, he assumed, so it was no wonder. He let out the breath he'd been holding in.

He tugged the hapless fellow he'd duped out of the jamb and propped him up against the railing of the access ramp. He frowned at the obviously broken arm, and quickly swelling face, but set to searching the man's pockets. He eventually found what he needed, a micro-chipped ID card bearing a photograph of the guy, several years younger, and noticeably less bludgeoned.

He stood and moved to return to Holiday, but was surprised to find him standing just at the base of the ramp. He looked at the fallen worker and whistled. "Jeeze, Doc. You're an animal, bro."

"You-but I thought-how come-why did-" Doc sputtered, pointing back toward the fenced in gate to the truck lot, which was now opened about wide enough for a person to comfortably step through.

Holiday pointed to his cross-transceiver. "C'mon bro, the future is now. Everything is connected. Think I can't break into a fucking electronic lock? Think again. Wasn't even any firewall. Straight hardware hack, bro."

Eschewing the obvious frustrations, Doc asked the burning question. "Why didn't you just do that to begin with?"

Holiday shrugged and laughed, trudging up the ramp and past his partner. "I just wanted to see what you'd do."

Truthfully, Kazuo had been the one to ask him to see what Doc would do, but Doc didn't need to know that. With their recent brush with the PLF, he supposed a test might've seemed in order from Kazuo's perspective, but Holiday had faith enough to know that Doc would do what he was asked to, when it got down to the nitty-gritty.

And that was good, Holiday supposed.. Cipher was big, big almost beyond belief, but Team Nebula, essentially it's "illicit operations department" amounted to very little in the way of actual manpower. There were other operatives out there, but they were small-fries compared to the sort of muscle that some of the other Teams could put out on the streets. If they were gonna stay whole through this not-so-allegorical knife-in-the-dark with the PLF, Nebula needed men who were willing to follow direction, solve problems on their own, and be the last ones standing when it all came crashing down around them, or so Kazuo had told him on the tarmac at Cipher's private airstrip a day previously.

"Doc is that guy." he'd assured Kazuo, leaning on the ladder to the small private jet.

"You're the one I'm worried about, honestly." the brooding CEO had informed him, without so much as a disarming smile to soften the obvious suspicions.

Holiday did imagine there were still some questions there, but that was fine. He had only shrugged, before tucking into the cabin, and leaving Kazuo behind. They both knew well enough that Holiday wasn't part of the team because he bought into the underlying ideology, so there was no sense arguing. His loyalty, much like everything else, came with conditions. For now, Holiday supposed, those were being satisfied, and that was enough to please them both for the time being.

"You're a real asshole, you know that?" Doc snipped, bringing him back to the moment.

Holiday only gave him a pat, as he proceeded past him. "Yeah, yeah. You know, you've been pulling that tired-ass "help-me-my-arms-are-full" gag since we were in school. Why don't you come on and let me show you how a real pro does this shit?"

Doc scoffed. "This I have to fucking see."

* * *

"Now that, is a hell of an outfit," Roxie commented. She'd popped another blotter in the changing room to forget the bitter name from her past, and she supposed that made her a fair deal more appreciative, as well.

He came back in vintage basketball shorts, which were scorching red with crisp white piping and barely came down to the middle of his thigh. A bright yellow print t shirt with teal-colored electrode all over the front rested under a black and white herringbone sports-jacket. Oversized black combat boots with purple nylon laces tied only up to the fourth eyelet, hung from his feet. He wore an upside down transparent green plastic sun-visor, cocked sideways, and a collection of plastic novelty-rings on his fingers. He crossed his arms and struck a hard-looking hip-hop pose, complete with thuggish sneer. Pikachu, on his head, sported a baby's onesie that said "Welcome to the Gun-Show!" complete with cartoonish, stenciled pectorals, and adopted a double-bicep flex for the sake of completion.

It was much better than his initial effort, at least. She'd had to send him back with the apropos that he didn't look nearly silly enough.

For her own efforts, she was replete in a collection of gold-plated band-necklaces laid on so thick that they formed a sort of scarf. A fur-lined bikini-top sat beneath an acid-green windbreaker with reflective silver racing stripes running down the arms. Having found particularly snazzy item, she had tossed her original selection for bottoms in favor of parachute pants printed with an eye-catching yellow, red and black lightning-bolt pattern. She wore no hat, but did seem to be sporting a feathered hair-pin of sorts in front of her left ear. Washing-machine dyed red leather moccasins completed the ensemble. She struck a pop-star pose, locking her body into a freeze-frame of some intricate dance move, hand extended to her right, facing profile left.

They both laughed at each other, noting how truly stupid they looked.

"Yanno, Holly and I used to play this game all the time,"

Ash thought about Holiday's rather objectionable taste in clothing, and realized that it all sort of made sense now. "I'm guessing that was before he turned into a giant asshat."

Roxie shrugged. "I suppose so." For a moment, she seemed to look really sad, but it passed so quickly, he thought that he must've been mistaken, until she went so far as to amend her admission. "Well, you know, Holly wasn't always so intolerable."

Ash shrugged a little, finding that hard to believe. It must've shown on his face, because she kept on about it. "No, I mean it. He actually used to be an alright bloke, back before the accident. Maybe a little strange, granted..."

Ash felt like there was a story there, but it was about Holiday, so he was sure he didn't want to hear it. Instead he looked down at his outfit. "So I guess we both have to wear this crap, since we both laughed."

Roxie tutted, leaving the subject behind just as quickly as she did. "S'pose so. Honestly, I'm still hoping you'll wiggle your cute little arse in those shorty-shorts for me."

Ash, flushing, only shook his head, and went with her to the counter.

"Suit yourself," she said, pretending to huff as she paid for the clothing-hers and his. They stepped out into the night again, looking and feeling a bit ridiculous, but somehow bolstered by their brush with insanity. People that passed them on the street didn't seem to pay them much mind, and those that did smiled, or pointed without jeering, and it didn't seem really like Roxie would've cared one way or another so he didn't see any reason why he should've.

"Where are we going now?"

"Oh, you'll see." Roxie assured. "Let's get a taxi. I don't want Holly to beat us there. He's a real prat about that sort of thing."

Ash supposed he would see. He had to admit, the dress-up thing had actually turned out to be sort of fun. Or, at the very least, mostly painless. Roxie was a little strange, but it seemed like she knew a good time when she saw one.

* * *

Doc and Holiday burst back onto the street at a full run, as they often seemed to after a job went south. It was all going pretty well, actually, until a rather beefy looking security guard had busted them red-handed in a server room, Holiday with his transceiver directly plugged into the database, and scouring for data. Even that could've gone over without much commotion if Holiday hadn't been so adamant about proving that he could handle the "smash" component of their smash-and-grab op. Doc had to admit that his flying karate chop to the neck had been visually impressive, but spy-movie antics didn't amount to much in the real-world, sadly, and so the security guard and his Ampharos had, in very short order given Holiday a good solid sock in the mouth, and the Pokemon equivalent of a taser-blast right to the gut.

It was a small wonder that he'd gotten Holiday up and running so fast, actually. Doc and his Mightyena had dealt with the problem, but not fast enough to prevent an alert from going back to the security department. It wouldn't be just overweight contracted security and their lame-ass Pokemon coming after them, at this point, it would be Team Rocket, and the baddest of the bad, at that, given that they were elbow deep in confidential Silph Co. data, right?

The admin who'd thus resoundingly proven that he was a poor match for the "brawn" position in their dynamic duo took his licks with dignity, at least, reeling back to his feet without much delay at all. Honestly, with the exception of a few instances where Holiday had run smack into a wall in his haste to vacate the premises, Doc had been hard pressed to keep up.

Holiday was a natural sprinter, given edge by cowardice, Doc thought, watching Holiday practically trample two female pedestrians as they blitzed cross the road, packed full of night-time traffic. There was pursuit, obviously, but neither of them could really spare them time to check how dogged or how many they were.

They kept running flat out, and didn't stop, slipping down alleyways, doubling back through a parking garage, and even once through a formal restaurant. When at last they did stop, skidding to a halt in front of the Jam Dragon, Doc was utterly winded, and Holiday looked like he was a hairs breadth away from croaking on the spot. He gulped air down like a Magikarp stuck on dry land, and deep dark circles ringed his eyes. He didn't even have the strength left to sit down across from Ash and Roxie like Doc did once they'd mad it inside. Instead, he collapsed into the booth behind them, and started mewling for death to come.

"Big night, then?"

Doc huffed a little before answering. "You could say that." He stopped when he saw what they were wearing. "Why are you dressed like it's laundry day?"

"Drink-Drank-Dress-Up," Roxie said offhandedly, as though that were an incredibly common expression, which should've adequately explained everything.

"Aw," Holiday managed, with what seemed like his last breath, unseen behind them. "I love," he stopped to cough and nearly gag, then finished. "Drink-Drank-Dress-Up."

"It's your bloody fault for not being there."

Holiday clambered up the back of the booth, and managed, somehow to get his head over it. He groaned when he saw what they were wearing through increasing tunnel vision. "You guys are weak. I could do way better." He flopped back down, bemoaning his own sorry state. "I missed Drink-Drank-Dress-up for this shit, and I would have swept it, easy. Fuck my life."

Holiday's cross-transceiver flew in a delicate arc over the back of the booth, and landed in Doc's lap. He reviewed the contents of the screen. Some gibberish about a Technical Machine that he didn't quite understand, along with map coordinates. "TM 96?...Isn't that the new Nature Power?"

"It is now," Holiday gasped, finally working up the energy to climb over and flop into the booth beside Doc. "We'll follow up on it later and I'll explain then." He seemed like he was having to brace himself on the table mostly. "Right now I just need a drink."

Roxie smiled. "Well you're both just in time, I was about to give a toast."

Ash whined. "Please don't." He felt uncomfortable enough just being here. They'd had to tell a lie just to get him in here, and it was an awful one at that.

There had been some suspicion raised over the state of his credentials at the door, which he supposed was fair, since he wasn't of legal age and had never once claimed to be. In fact, he was blatantly aware of the fact that his trainer's license had been tampered with, since he'd watched Roxie do it just a few moments earlier, tucked safely into a nearby street-side entryway.

"I usually carry a few of these things on me, just to dodge the media," she'd explained, using the flat edge of her own ID to flushly affix a thin urethane sheet she'd produced to the front of of his ID, and push out any visible air-bubbles, she said, which might give away the ruse.

After a moment of nervous silence in which Ash didn't know what to say, which Roxie plainly mistook for disbelief, Roxie snorted. "I'm pretty huge overseas. Really. I can't even have lunch without getting mobbed. It's a real problem."

He'd nodded his accord with that, and grudgingly allowed her to go about her task, since it had only seemed like a harmless piece of plastic at first, but once she held up his trainer's license again and showed him how the printed fields and subtle blotches of otherwise innocuous color on the transparency meshed up perfectly with the per-existing information, to make his portrait appear very subtly older, changed the printed name to "HAIMON, BUSTER F.N." and perhaps most importantly-and to ash, distressingly-alter his birth-date to June 9th, seven years earlier than it had actually been, he had felt a sense of dread overtake him.

He'd voiced his uneasiness in no uncertain terms. "What if I get caught!? I could get in a lot of trouble!"

Roxie only scoffed at his behavior. "We won't get caught. Just let me do the talking."

He hadn't exactly kept that promise, and had nearly brushed with disaster when questioned by the plainly unamused looking bouncer, but Roxie had elbowed him and stolen the lead, thankfully steering them well clear of being discovered, and into the establishment without further issue.

"Underage?! Listen you snot-nose little shit, my friend here was takin' shrapnel in Khalos when you were crappin' in your hands and rubbin' it on your face! Show some fuckin' respect." Roxie roared.

Somehow it had worked, but Ash wasn't quite sure he appreciated the effort. His mother had raised him to be honest, and she'd certainly raised him not to go places he didn't belong, and this was certainly a place he didn't belong.

"Hey everyone!" Roxie yelled, standing up straight in here seat. When her hand fell on Ash, he felt sick with embarrassment. "I'd like to congratulate my friend here, he just came back from an 8 month tour!"

He gasped at her lie. "It was actually just-" he began raising his voice to explain, but she shoved him down into his seat again, and went on over top his protest.

"I want to tell you all a story about my friend here. A great man!" She pointed to Ash with a grandiose gesture.

Picking up on the gist, Doc and Holiday echoed her words. "A great man!"

Ash felt like he could die with all eyes on him. He tried not to look like he was proud of himself, because he was certainly not. The gathered patrons only seemed to eat that up, though, because there was an assortment of hoops and hollers, even though he "Three weeks ago, leftenant Haimon here along with six of his squad mates were ambushed and quickly pinned down under enemy fire, with two of them being grievously wounded in the assault."

The crowd grew quiet with the gravitas, and he felt as though he might start to prune up if any more blood drained from his face.

"Many a man might've cowered or fled, but not leftenant Haimon! No, sir! Using only the meager armament and supplies given him, he got all six of those men to safety, at the risk of his own life! And what's more, tonight he celebrates his birthday a true hero!"

Mortified, Ash covered his eyes, and hoped to sink into the backdrop.

"To valour!" Roxie cried.

"To honor!" Holiday joined in, slapping the table.

"To glory!" Doc yelled.

"To good officers!" Roxie added!

"To brave soldiers!" Doc piled on.

"To the left nut that lieutenant Haimon lost to gunshot wounds suffered while saving those six souls!" Holiday finished in a way that he must've felt quite helpful.

By now the whole place was in an uproar, and hollering their own praises. People cheered and whistled and clapped and Roxie dragged him up out of the booth, when one resounding word became clear in the tumult.

"Speech! Speech! Speech!"

Ash didn't know if he could think of anything more terrifying or embarrassing, but now, as opposed to earlier when she'd prevented him from standing to clear his own name, she now sidled all the way to the edge of the bed so that he couldn't sit back down. Somebody in the cloud clapped a glass into his hand while he stood there helplessly, face now converted from snowy paleness to tomato red.

Roxie tugged his herringbone jacket from behind and whispered almost inaudibly even in the close proximity. "Don't cock this up, eh?"

He didn't know what to say, but it went without saying that he was expected to say something. He was horrible at fabrication, and even if it was true he wouldn't have known what in the hell to say here. The fact that every second he delayed ate into the validity of their lie only made it worse. But the worst thing of all, was that only one thing really came to mind, because his most hated adversary had planted it there.

His voice came out as a squeal, a shrill, high, nervous wail that cut through the din easily, much to his dismay. His inflection, more of a question than anything else, seemed to go unnoticed, or else only added to the general reaction of explosive, jovial laughter and well-wishing.

He couldn't believe the words were coming out of his mouth, even as he said them, and the fact that he and Holiday's eyes met ever so briefly, only enhanced his grief.

"To my left nut!"

There was a great wash of table-slapping, rooting and hollering, and then everyone extended their glasses to him. Not knowing what else to do, he mimicked the gesture. Therefore, when they all tilted theirs back and drank heavily from their contents, so did he, seeing no alternative.

His first swallow only went about halfway down his throat, and he coughed into the glass, just as Roxie raked him back down into the booth again. She took the glass from his hands as he coughed and held his throat. "What the hell is that?" he said between sputtering, ragged coughs. "Mouthwash or something?"

Roxie sniffed the glass, then recoiled. "Eugh. Well-drink, obviously, so not far from it."

Doc smirked, accepting a hand-off from Roxie. "First taste of hard liquor, huh? I'll drink it then, you sissy."

Holiday was too busy dying of laughter to comment. Roxie patted Ash's back sharply, as much trying to console him as to help him cough up the liquor he'd accidentally inhaled. "Don't worry, the good stuff will start showing up any minute now." As if that had been something he'd actually been worried about, she curled her hands across his bicep and bounced a little in the booth, to even his mood. "You'll see."

And sure enough, they did come, one right after another, the complements of the house and it's patrons. Drinks of all types and varieties, in quantity and in volume.

"Ooh, that's me." Holiday said excitedly, intercepting a white wine spritzer with lemon twist before it could even hit the table. He sipped it daintily.

"Fancy." Doc commented wryly.

Holiday winked in appreciation, ignoring the implied criticism entirely."I keep it mad classy, bro."

"I see that."

"Here's one you might like," Roxie suggested, reaching for a short glass amidst what was quickly growing into quite the collection, with more being shoved on by the minute. She produced a cloudy yellow drink for Ash's approval.

"Classic Greyhoundour. Vodka and grapefruit juice on the rocks. Simple."

Ash hesitated. "I don't think I should really be doing this."

Roxie sighed. "Look, mate, we're in a pub. People drink in pubs."

"Yeah man. If you're not drinking something, people are gonna start to get suspicious. Especially since almost everyone in here is buying you sympathy drinks for only having one testicle." Doc chipped in.

Holiday snorted. "And also, you're a bitch if you don't."

Ash groaned, feeling compressed between the proverbial rock and hard place. "I don't think this is a good idea."

Roxie scoffed. "You didn't think Drink-Drank-Dress-up was a good idea, either."

"Biiiiiitch." Holiday snarled, long and contemptuously, evidently taking offense to that assertion.

"But yet, look how much fun you had!" Roxie countered, giving him a nudge, and indicating his elaborately silly state of dress. "I'm tellin' ya, you're in for a good time. Don't spoil it now by being a prat."

"Yeah, man," Doc added, nodding toward the drink in front of him. "Drink up."

"Biiiiiiiiiiitch!" Holiday went on belligerently.

He wasn't sure what a prat was, but it didn't sound very flattering. He looked around the table, where expressions ranged from encouraging, to disappointed, to, in Holiday's case, downright resentful, and he spun the glass incrementally in his fingers, wondering what to do. He glanced at Pikachu, sure that most of what was happening was going straight over his partner's head, and he was right. Pikachu seemed more interested in the plethora of liquids laid out on the table than in any consequences they might incur. That, and Pikachu always seemed to act a little funny when Holiday was around. Strangely distracted, somehow.

Maybe he was reading too much into it. He picked up the drink, and looked around, gauging for a reaction. He couldn't deny the surge of paranoia he felt as the lip of glass came close to his lips, that he would look up and find his mother standing there, face red with disapproving ire. He almost set it back down, when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

He withdrew it. It was from Sabrina.

_**Take the drink, **_it read.

He frowned, wondering what the hell it was all supposed to mean, and took a drink almost grudgingly, though this one was far more ginger than his first. A moment passed in queer silence.

"Blegh, Bitter!"he complained, slumping forward onto the table.

Roxie's approving smile didn't fade, even though he promptly spat a mouthful of liquid back into the glass.

"S'awrite, luv. We'll find one more suited to your distinguishing palate."

* * *

Ein felt his neck twisting a bit, a growing feeling of perplexion at something he really didn't understand, which was every bit as rare as it was unsettling. Something was wrong. Something minute, yes, but still very wrong. A certain quality to the air perhaps. He looked at the barometer on the wall.

No.

He shook his head and tried to refocus on the task at hand, inspecting the protein mesh he'd been subjecting to controlled burst of low level gamma. He set his hand over the blocking aperture in test environment he'd constructed under the ventilation hood in his abbreviated laboratory, but then stopped.

Something just didn't feel right. He paged engineering.

"Aft Engineering Space, Reactor Technician Davies, Go ahead."

"This is Chief Science Officer Ein. Is everything okay back there?"

"Monitors showing all green, sir, why?"

Ein hesitated, deciding against sharing his immaterial feelings. "Run a low-priority diagnostic. I want to know about any deviations outside 5% of normal."

"On which systems?"

Ein huffed, thinking. What could be wrong on the boat that he would feel it? "Start with propulsion."

There was a light scuffling as the engineer left the com panel briefly. Ein thought he could hear the distant clacking of switches on a board over the omnipresent thrumming that fed back to him on loop through the loudspeaker. Technician Davies came back on, sounding a bit retired. "We are hearing normal cavitation on the main screw. Flow noise over the sail and planes is below audibility."

"What about the drive train?"

Another pause, likely as the technician brought up another screen on his display.

"Pressure and temperature at ten percent of all-full. Turning with about six thousand shaft horsepower. She's running quiet, sir."

Ein fumed for a moment in silence. "Any turbulence?"

"Temperature above the thermocline is three-zero centigrade, outside hull probes show just a tick under ten centigrade. Laminar flow across the hull is minimal. Picking up no significant eddies below the layer on sonar."

Ein frowned, slapping down his safety glasses. "What is our current depth?"

"We are showing...huh."

"Yes? What is it?"

""The INS shows our depth at one-zero-eight estimated meters, but the echo-sounding fathometer finds one-one-three actual."

"That isn't that significant of a difference." Ein offered, unimpressed. Inertial Navigation was not an absolute system, after all. It was simply the best estimate that technology could afford down here in the dark of the ocean, blind and bound inside of a metal tube.

"No sir. It's just unusual that we would see a depth variation. I don't have any logged alteration in the aspect of the aerial planes since our initial dive, so we should have remained at constant depth since our initial sounding."

That made sense. They traveled at neutral buoyancy, only using the stubby wing-like aerials to steer the ship in three dimensions, in order to remain undetectable. Venting ballast made bubbles, bubbles made noise, and noise was detectable from a long, long way off in the ocean. Unfortunately, that meant only one thing. "So we're sinking?"

Taken aback by the blunt statement, the engineer stammered, and the intercom link was filled with the rapid clacking of a man working all-out on his console to solve a problem. "It's likely just a glitch in station-keeping. I'm looking for the root cause now."

The answer came with impressive rapidity."Found it. I'm showing a minute difference in the displacement to ballast ratio. We are heavier than we should be." With relief that it was no fault of his own, the engineer continued. "Probably some of the crewmen brought on cargo that wasn't signed into the manifest again. I'm sorry sir. I'll have the Senior Chief look into it."

Ein nodded his head, agreeing with the assessment, but frowning deeper in spite of it. That seemed like a very miniscule think to have noticed, even by the sophisticated standards he set for himself. "How minute a difference, exactly?"

"Minute enough to compensate for, but lets see, I'm showing a difference of...wow, one five one kilograms.

Ein felt his body lock up tight, triggered by a foul memory. He nudged a container of acetone, slopping it onto his coat, but paid it no mind. Thinking Ein had missed the significance of the number, Davies repeated himself. "Say again, exactly one hundred and fifty-one kilograms."

The weight being the same as the number of Pokemon listed in the Kanto Dex was not at all lost on him, however. He'd found that slightly ironic once before; remarked on it, even. It had been just a short time after J had emerged from post-operative anesthetic, a little less than a year ago.

He'd watched her standing there on the scale, naked and somehow shameful, in spite of the fact that she was as far from sexually attractive in his eyes as refuse; one emaciated breast drooping beside it's quick-set polymer prosthetic companion, body hairless and bloated, scarred like a boat-propeller ravaged Dewgong. She was so twisted and deformed that it almost made him ashamed to have built such a thing; a hodge-podge of materials grafted into unwholesome flesh and bone at perplexing angles.

She'd been a rushed job, by necessity. The work required to save a life so far gone as that did not warrant time spent for cosmetic sake. He'd done the best work he could in the time he had, and it had been damn good work, at that. He'd been successful, and that counted for more than anything else, no matter how you sliced it. Still, it was a wonder she could stand on two legs, and he did feel some measure of guilt for that, however much like disgust it might've felt in that moment.

"One hundred and fifty one kilos exactly," he noted, injecting jocular tone for his own uneasiness more than anything else. "A number representing our first scientific strides into Pokemon research and the first scientific strides into eugenic cybernetics."

"How do you feel?" He'd asked, trying to at least find some clarification for her silence. She had been quite alert since waking up, and so the quiet seemed especially unnerving. The silence was cold.

"Doesn't it feel good to be alive?" he prodded.

She croaked in the low, vapid way she did, the best they could manage between the tattered remains of her vocal chords and artificial modulators. It was a reasonable semblance of a human voice, he supposed, but the harmonics were off a bit, giving her a slight echo. "Good?"

"You're free to enjoy the rich tapestry of life, after all. There's a lot to live for in this world," Ein assured., slightly perturbed by that response.

She let out a cough, or was it a laugh? It sounded like both. "Now what happens?"

"My financial backers want me to turn you loose for the time being, but I may call you back in for further testing at some point. We'll remain in touch with you at all times, though, in case there are any issues." He stepped forward and pushed a stethoscope to her chest, listening, though evidently not to her heart, as he moved southward, and to the extreme right. Apparently satisfied with what he heard, the scientist once more stood straight, and offered his hand. "Is there anything I can offer you, before you leave?"

"Tell me your name," she responded, wasting no time at all. in clapping her robotic hand over top of his own in a handshake. Her new appendage dwarfed his.

"Ein."

"Do something for me, Ein."

"Yes? What is it?"

Her eyes locked cold to his, seeming to almost swallow his gaze entirely like a deep well that wouldn't reveal it's bottom. "Pray."

He'd faltered a bit, he remembered."Excuse me?"

"If I come back, it won't be for testing. When we see each other again, that's the day you die."

"A-Are you threatening me?" He'd tried to withdraw his hand, but she gripped him like a vice, tightening painfully across his palm.

"Not threatening. Informing. I'm not telling you what I would do if I could do it. What I'm telling you, that is what I am going to do, because that's what I can do. What I will do. If we ever see each other again, it will be when I come looking for you, not the other way around. And when I find you, Ein, I am going to tear you apart like a fucking wood-chipper." Her eyes challenged him. He'd built that body, and he could think of nothing he could interpose between them to stop her, if that was her desire.

"You know that the PLF will never allow you to just walk away and never be heard from again." Ein had countered logically, bolstered somewhat by the affirmation that he was protected. He'd had backing; more than she could ever count on at least. "You're saying I should just pray that we never see each other again, hm?"

Calmly, and without any sign of discomfort, she stepped down from the scale and released his hand. "No. What you should pray for is that when I'm finished, nobody puts your all your pieces back together, because what I'll do to you the second time over will be so much worse." And with that, she had dressed herself in black and purple and disappeared from the lab.

They'd kept tabs on her for as far as Canalave, but she was an elusive bird to say the least. There were always wisps of her all over the map, suggestions of where she might've been, and where she was going, but never anything solid. She'd responded to the calls when they made them, but she was diligent about destroying her phones, staying off the radar, at least personally. Since the Tojou job she'd gone silent, but now there was a sign right in front of his face. She was alarmingly close.

He didn't get to where he'd gotten in life by taking chances. He slammed the com button down again. "I need the triplets. Get them in here, now!"

Only static answered him, and his heart crawled slowly, nauseatingly up into his throat. He backed away from the console, spilling the acetone with a crash of broken glass this time, and looked around in the cold, quiet silence. He swallowed.

The hatch exploded. A foot of steel and aluminum laminate screamed under torsion, bowing inward and spiraling of it's hinges like the paper wrapping on a fire-cracker. Emergency klaxons blared, and tiny streams of sea-water shot through microscopic perforations in the riveting that lined the pressure hull, torn open by the sudden blast. Ein was thrown backward into the rear bulkhead, and slumped to the deck.

A hole the size of a pick-up truck vented fire and smoke into the compartment where the forward hatch had once been. Ein tried to get up, his first instinct a knee-jerk reaction to go for the fire extinguisher and douse the flames, then, however, something came through that hole. Something thin and black, and oddly shaped, twitching forward like a poorly-made stop-motion statuette. The thing stopped at the threshold, rimmed by fire and chemical smoke, and scanned the room, head it's head casting back and forth like a search beacon.

Then it saw him.

J made no dramatic show of her approach, no slow and cautious predatory advance. She shoved the mangled remains of an overturned desk out of her way and went for him, baring straight and certain, the shiny black coating on her metallic digits gleaming in the soft glow of fire and obnoxious radiance of warning lights with equal vileness.

Ein tried to stand, looking for something to hold onto, something to grab that he could use to hoist himself off the floor, and run. Why wouldn't his legs work? They kicked feebly as he tried to get them under himself., but nothing came of it. It was only when he looked down that he realized that one of the legs of the desk he'd been working at was driven clean through his thigh. He clutched it, the pain suddenly all he could think of.

J hunched low over him, eyes focused and intent on his whimpering face. She reached up, but strangely, did not grasp for him, the digits of her own hand prodding at her own throat instead, as though looking for some physical flaw. She dug her thumb sharply into the side of her own neck, at the larynx, so deeply that she might've looked like she was trying to tear out her adams apple. A loud, mechanical click echoed out of her slightly opened mouth. Ready now, she smiled.

"W-what are you-AAAAAGGH!"

Grasping the table-leg in her huge grasper, she worked the piece of metal in a firm but slow and meticulous circle, like she were stirring cookie dough inside his leg. He screamed in such intense agony that for a while, neither of them could hear the warning klaxons at all.

She kept grinding away at him, jogging the spear-like torture device a few times to make sure no one area inside his leg went un-gouged, listening carefully to the changes in pitch and tone of his hideous wailing. That was the point of this after all.

When she was done, she popped the desk-leg free with a sideways twist, turning the jagged puncture wound into a ripped and shredded tear that nearly split his leg in two. She reached to her throat again, punching her fingers into the fleshy cartilage until there was clicking sound.

She tested her work. They'd done it once before, after all, listening to old archived police recordings of her voice, and feeding it into the recorder function of her voice modulator, in an attempt to recreate the sound of her original voice. There hadn't been enough remaining laryngeal tissue to reform proper vocal chords and the simulation It had never been quite right, but this seemed to come out much better. She spoke to Ein in perfectly accented Orran highlands enunciation. She spoke to him with a direct copy of his own voice, derived from the distinct aural composite of his screaming.

It still wasn't quite right, being a bit too highly-pitched, and colored by the background whine of the warning sirens, but it would do. "Don't die just yet. There's a lot to live for in this world, after all."

Then she bashed him across the face with the heavy metal implement, instantly putting his lights out. She went to the communications panel and keyed it back up, shutting off the scrambling device on her gauntlet to allow standard communications to flow in once more.

"-eading a fire in your compartment, do you copy?" the radio popped and hissed as it came back to life

"I read you. Fire in my compartment! Major chemical explosion!"

"Are you alright, sir? Can you contain the fire?" the engineer responded, fooled completely by her mimicry.

"No. Containment is impossible without full-scale fire-fighting procedures. Need immediate evacuation."

"We're sending someone in now, sir."

"Negative. I can get out on my own. Focus on getting this boat to the surface! Say again, emergency crash surface! Combustion is at an advanced stage. it will foul scrubbing system and asphyxiate everyone on-board in very short order unless we get some ventilation."

"Sir, we are running quiet. A crash surface now. will give away our position on even passive sonar."

"If you want to choke to death when carbon monoxide displaces all the oxygen on this vessel, go right ahead, otherwise I suggest you get this damned ship out from underneath 100 meters of water and into the open air!"

"R-right away sir. Depressurizing ballast now!"

There was a lurch like a roller-coaster hitting the bottom of an incline from a straightaway, as the nose of the sub reeled upward, and tilted all the decks at a forty degree angle. An incredible sensation of momentum overtook J, though she knew they weren't moving that fast at all. It was simply the hugeness of the sub, coupled with not being able to see what was going on outside.

She collected Ein laboriously, holding him a fireman's carry that only compounded her difficulty with ascending the slowly inclining room back to it's door. When even her gait and strength could no longer keep them upright, she climbed up the grated floor with both legs and her free hand. Higher and higher, steeper and steeper the floor became; fifty, sixty, seventy degrees. Anything that wasn't bolted down slid heavily across the deck, slamming and crashing and falling over her like a burning, twisted wave of wreckage, but she shrugged it off, no worse for the wear as it passed over, and not giving a damn whether or not Ein weathered it with similar results.

She clapped her clawed metal hand over the ravaged hatchway, and pulled herself out of the burning, hissing tumult the aft laboratory had become, just as the submarine breached and hit the apex of it's upward momentum. Her heavy grip kept her locked down to the deck while bits of burning detritus went flying overhead past her, hurtling violently back the way they'd came but the crash, the heavy slap of the submarine coming back down into the surf after springing up like a submerged cork, slammed her head into the deck like a sledge.

She came back up with only partial faculties, sight blurry, the seams of her newly grafted prosthetic skin having given out, flapping away from her face like a morbid night-mask, and her ears deafened to the hell all around. Still, she clutched her cargo, found her feet somehow as the boat evened off, and then scrambled ahead.

She needed to get him off this boat. Once she hit the open air, she could throw up a beacon and her own ship would zero in on it, fly in, and whisk her and her prize away before anyone knew it was there. While she was stuck in here, however, she was vulnerable.

The disaster crew hadn't reached the gangway she was in yet, and she was only two compartments down from the escape hatch, but there were far worse things on this boat than armed crewmen. Those she could all but melt through if she had to, but there were things on this ship that could stop even her, if she lingered.

As expected, she crossed paths with the containment crew, all of them bedecked in firefighting gear, none of them expecting a fight, and none of them capable of handling the fight she could bring anyways. She barreled into the first, trampling him on her way past as his bulky gear fouled his balance. The second caught a point blank shot from her petrification cannon and fell on the three behind him, pinning them down with his drastically increased weight as she bolted up into a companionway at the side of the passage.

She took the ladder at speed, not caring that she bounced Ein's head off of every step above her in the cramped spiral staircase that lead up to the top hatch. Seawater fell over her head when she turned the seal and pushed, nearly washing her back down, but she pushed through it, eventually emerging onto the deck, where the stormy night sky and the roar of the empty sea all around seemed like a paradise compared to the smoking, claustrophobic nightmare of that submarine.

Her body shuddered with relief so tangible that it seemed like even the machine part of her felt it. She threw Ein out onto the upper anechoic hull and he bounced through no fault of the rubberized tile, landing in a twisted, unconscious, and rapidly leaking pile.

When she pulled her own upper body through the hatchway, she was hung up short. At first, she believed her foot was caught, and she snarled in frustration, kicking back to dislodge it, and then heaving again, but whatever it was, stubbornly held fast, and tightened. When it pulled again she knew she was in trouble.

With enormous energy and terrible strength, it jerked her torso back into the hole, slamming her face first into the deck so hard that her optical sensors gave out. She felt blindly for her gauntlet and fingered the homing controls, even as a set of hands somehow effective against her stronger digits loped over her shoulder, trying to pry her away from them.

She bucked backwards off the ladder, slamming herself against the hatch, trying to shake off the interloper climbing up her back, and break free from it's grip. Her eyesight fuzzed back in just in time to see that she'd not only failed to do so, but that she'd been relieved of the homing components in her gauntlet via excision. Blades flashed in the dark, biting out chunks of her arm and leg in descending order of threat as her and the two people she'd least wanted to tangle with coiled in the companionway like fighting Arbok.

She screamed and thrashed and beat at the two figures even as they pulled her back down into the darkness below, water spilling in from above, and smoke rolling up from below, but they were like vapor, immaterial and untouchable save for where they struck. Blood and oil and worse flew in every direction as did she, feeling like she was a hard object being tossed in a food processor, too big and dense to break up entirely, but slashed and scored relentlessly by the whirling agitators.

She stopped grabbing for them, and started grabbing for the ladder, desperate to pull herself up and out of the companionway, and back up onto deck, cycling through the remaining functions on her gauntlet in desperate panic. A hollow tube telescoped from a battered compartment with a thunk, and she fired off one, two, three phosphorous flares into the tiny passage, even as those terrible knives sliced portions of the firing tube away like segments of vegetable. The companionway lit up with a brilliance that scoured the dark, as the incandescent flares ricocheted off the interior bulkheads.

It didn't buy her much, but she took it. "Fuck you!" she roared, rearing back her arm as she exploded from the open hatch and flopped onto the sopping main deck beside her quarry. She fired six or seven more scalding flares into the night before the rotary clip was exhausted and fell free, steaming. A thousand square meters of ocean lit up like a baseball stadium. She needed it to be enough for the ship and her crew to find her.

The triplets were already hot on her heels as she scrambled up off the deck, hydraulics busted and servos wrecked. She faltered on the second stride and tumbled, rolling and throwing a poke ball from her belt.

Salamence! Her first knee-jerk reaction had been to send out Salamence. She wanted Salamence's bulk, Salamence's strength, Salamence's teeth, but Salamence was gone. Salamence was dead. Salamence was a mess somewhere in the northern forest just like she'd been and there was nobody stupid or brilliant enough to put all his pieces back together again. So now instead of having Salamence she had Drapion and that was all. Where she needed teeth and strength and bulk she had skittering legs and flashing stinger and grasping claws that would do no better than she had.

"Drapion!" she gurgled, battered and rolling with the wave-tossed submarine. "Spread Toxic Spikes everywhere!" It was a poor effort, but it was all that she could think of. Drapion was not the Pokemon that Salamence was, though, and flashed into combat in which it was readily outnumbered and hopelessly outclassed. The two triplets swung low beneath the advancing claws and whipping tail, seamlessly cutting and slicing as they went, crippling the monster with minimal effort. Drapion skidded to a stop before the pain set in, legs failing, and torso turning to pursue blindly.

"Drapion! Drapion, now!" J cried, scrambling backwards from the two advancing figures.

Drapion's throat bulged as it hocked up the gastric mass, ejecting the poisonous caltrop shaped spines in a parabolic arc. She'd hoped that it would stall them, deter them, slow them down, anything, but even the sticky spines couldn't hold fast to the ships slick outer hull, and were washed away by the first wave that crested the top of the cigar-shaped vessel.

One, not slowing, touched Ein as he passed, and though it was not in an explicitly medical way, he must've felt a pulse, because he murmured to his brother. "Still alive. Barely."

J kept shuffling backward, trying to buy herself some time, but it was pointless. Her back thumped against the mast, stopping her dead, it's slick rubber tiles denying her purchase as she tried to stand. She figured it would take both of them to haul her up off the deck, but it was not so. One alone lifted her from the deck, and held her steady. She twisted, trying to get her cannon in line with his face, but a gout of sparks and oil was all that came from that, his knife meeting her hand with perpendicular force, shaving the remainder of her bulky weapon from her arm.

"Not this one," the one holding her said in the same, unexcited way.

The tip of the knife dug deep into her abdomen, up and through whatever it was that was inside her. There must've been something there that was real, because she felt herself wrenching, wretching, and grasping as it was worked back and forth between the bones and the batteries. In a surge he pumped it through her back and into the soft rubber of the mast coating. He let her go, and there she hung, pegged to her tip toes.

She spat indecipherable words into his face, coughing, gurgling, gagging and leaving tiny droplets of red on that immaculate, forgettably androgynous face. "Ghrgh! Rhhhgh! Grkgh!" The sound was all consonants and rage. Blood, actual blood bubbled between her teeth, and spilled down her chin to mingle with the thick pink mechanical fluid that poured from her chest like a faucet. Breath growing short she pawed at the handle of the knife uselessly.

He let her, quietly waiting for the struggle to stop. And it did. J's real hand fell from the last clinging fingertip to join the motionless mechanical one at her side. Her head slumped, and she fell silent. Dark, voluminous blood that had gathered in her mouth poured out at once onto her chest.

One triplet turned to the other, casually, work finished. "Ghetsis will want him taken to medical. His injuries are quite severe and-"

However he'd planned to finish his sentence, J never gave him the chance.. That metal hand, not so useless after all, shot out with speed and curled around his neck, fingers compressing his windpipe like a vice.

"Got you!" J hissed, clamping down with rock-crushing force on that neck that now seemed so fragile in her grasp. There was something unnatural about them, that made them impossible to get a hold of in a straight fight, like trying to grab something under the water, a subtle quality that could only be defeated with the right know-how. She'd needed him close, so close that she couldn't miss, and she had needed him still and confident and she'd gotten both, by playing dead. Now she hungered for vengeance.

She ripped the blade out of her own chest. It broke against something more solid than itself half-way there, but she put the remaining jagged piece of it to work for her, holding it up with lethal intent, riding the asphyxiating triplet down to his knees. "Leave the scientist where he lies. Go back below decks or I leave your brother looking like a late term abortion."

The other triplet watched for a moment, reasonably a bit surprised, but not seeming all that alarmed. He took one step forward, as if testing her resolve. She squeezed so hard she heard throat cartilage give with a pop. She laid the knife to the purpling gap of jaw that spilled over the top of her metallic grabber, even though it wasn't necessary. She could tear his spine out if she wanted.

"If you want to see it up close when I chop his goddamn head out by the root, keep on coming. Otherwise, I suggest you go." J swore. The triplet she was holding started elbowing her, oxygen running out, and it was denting her artificial ribcage, but that would've relied on pain to stop her, and where mortal injury had failed, pain had no hope left. She shook him roughly, ending the struggle, and nearly breaking his neck for his trouble.

The other stepped back once. He glanced at Ein, but didn't make any other moves. "Your gambit is pointless," he explained, watching his brother's eyes roll up unto his head. He turned, and seemed to be on his way back to the hatch, but he stopped just a few feet away from the thrashing Drapion. The massive insect was flailing in pain at it's previous injuries, panicked and enraged and desperate to get it's hands on anything.

Her Pokemon went for him, bravely, stupidly, and was consummately deflected, as the triplet whipped in under the hooked claw and severed it's leading support leg completely, driving Drapion face-first to the deck by a bloody stump. J could only watch as he mounted the thrashing, floundering creature, matte white blade in hand, eyes pale and fixed. "This is your only chance. Surrender," he explained, voice calm and even, so unlike her own.

J seethed like a boiler. "Do it and I kill him!"

She could hear her ship roaring overhead. So close, and yet not close enough to stop it from happening. The knife went high, and drove down, straight between Drapion's wide-set eyes, slipping through thick, bony carapace like butter under the skillful direction of the triplet. Drapion flinched as it died, body coming to a trembling, twitching halt, after a moment of total muscular tension.

J, eyes on fire, knew she couldn't carry out her promise. If she killed his brother, she could expect that the other triplet would never stop hunting her, and she couldn't have that. In a direct conflict it was clear that even one of them would be enough to defeat her, and the same trick would never avail her twice. Instead of ripping his spine out, she hurled the downed twin overboard with the last measure of stunted defiance she had.

The next few moments were a disorienting surge, as a warning-shot from the main gun of her ship cut through the water not ten meters off the port side of the stern. The boat lurched sideways as thousands of gallons of water flash-boiled under the pressure of the ships main solid state laser battery. The blooming was intense, and made the light of the slowly descending flares seem pale by comparison. Even she had to shield her face from the unbearable golden line tearing its way across the ocean.

When it was over, she charged for Ein, and thankfully, blessedly, the triplet went for his unconscious and rapidly sinking brother instead, cutting a dive off the rolling vessel just astern of where she stopped short, instead of intervening. She caught Ein by the collar just before he went sliding over himself, and pulled him back with her as she backpedaled to keep her own footing.

A fast-rope, dangling from what appeared to be an open hole in the sky whipped across the hull, D rings and harness straps bouncing and coiling like a handful of thrown dice. She snagged them, somehow managing to get herself clipped to the line, and at least enough of Ein into the harness that she could manage the rest. The rope snapped taught, and pulled her off of the submarine, just as the men on-board began coming up from below. They pointed automatic weapons and fired, with limited success. Ein took one in the arm, and perhaps three or four more bounced off of her to minimal effect, but she made it out clean.

Though, clean perhaps, wasn't the right word.

Whole. She'd made it out whole. Mostly, at least. She let the cable tow her into the cargo bay before she let go of it, scrambling to lug Ein's dead weight across the deck and out of the way of the closing hatch. "Get us the fuck out of here," she barked by a nearby crewman.

Ein, she gave to K, who was waiting dutifully and silently, as was his new custom. His shattered jaw shrouded behind a visor similar to her own, save for being a full-face covering, he looked ever more her protege. "Drag him to the dispensary and prep him."

She left the cargo bay with no more to offer than that, and cut a quick path back to her quarters.

When she was there, she closed the door behind her, and considered why she'd come here, since she was needed elsewhere. For a moment, she thought that it would be to rage in peace over Drapion. Truthfully, though, she hadn't given much thought to Salamence either. Both had been good, strong Pokemon. Both had served her for a long, long time.

She was angry that she'd lost them, but she found herself bereft of sorrow. Bereft of much of anything, except that solid point of anger. Those had been her Pokemon, and they'd been lost to mistakes and missteps.

Hell, this whole op had taken place because she was coming down to the wire on the resources she had left to her. This had been messy business, indeed.

It reminded her a lot of those tasks her and her old partner had often been set to, back in her Rocket days. Working your hands, your heart and your soul down to nothing for no gain that you could call your own, losing so much that you could barely say you broke even no matter what the score was. With dividends paid in blood or dignity or both, and no way to stop it or back out, a victory just meant being alive at the end of the day, however beat up or screwed up you were by what had gone on. Those times made her sick to her stomach.

She wondered where her partner was now. Had she died all those years ago, high up in the mountains on Faraway, buried in an avalanche like everyone said? Or was she retiring easy on some tropical island in the Old Sea that nobody knew about, having faked her death to escape exile. She imagined Miyamoto all shacked up with some aboriginal chieftain and his ten paint-faced kids like the Swiss Family Rocket and shit, all fat, happy and skirted with grass.

Either way, dead or otherwise, Miyamoto's escape from the Rocket life seemed a lot easier than the way out she'd taken.

She dragged a hand through her hair, feeling the grime and the blood and the saltwater keenly, but not so keenly as her anger. The skin at her scalp had busted loose again, peeling away from the steel and polymer facade underneath.

She looked at herself in the desk-side mirror, holding the mask-like skin-cover to her forehead with her fingertips.. Was it that she was too vain to let her outward appearance change, or was it that she was afraid to see the cymbal-crashing clockwork Mankey underneath? She teased at the edge of the silicone graft, pulling it down as far as she dared.

The line of rivets under her brow turned her stomach over before she could go any further, and with a wince and shudder, she pasted it back up. Uncomfortable with the feeling, she shoveled up more anger to replace it. She tacked the skin back with a hard push of her thumb, and got onto her feet. She collected the surgeon's tools that had been left in her room some time ago by the chief engineer.

She'd seen the engineer do enough ugly amputations out here in the shit, too far from a hospital or too hot to risk going to one, for her to get the gist of how they worked. Cut, grind, fold and suture. Drain, if practical. There wasn't a single one of those things she wouldn't enjoy doing to the person who had made her this way.

She grabbed K by the collar as he came to report his task as complete. It wasn't, not by a damn sight. "You're going to be my Nurse Joy." She pulled him right along with her and into the cramped dispensary, where Ein was lashed to a steel table, tools already arrayed for her grizzly work.

Taking only enough time to remove her bloody coat, she didn't bother to prep herself or the patient. "Give me the rotor," she commanded, indicating a large, toothsome buzz-saw to K.

She cut into him without hesitation, feeling neither nerve nor guilt, as she lopped off the parts of him that she did not have the surgical skill to repair, which amounted to a fair deal. Ein had lost a lot of blood already, so it wasn't as messy as she'd seen it get.

It was to her benefit this way, anyhow.

If he ever wanted to be whole again, he would need to show her how to fix him, in the same way he'd "fixed" her. In doing that, he would teach her the skills she would need to repair herself. Improve herself, if it was possible, down to the last chip and servo. Once she'd learned that, the PLF could have him back, but not until.

That was a skill she desperately required. Self sufficiency. Once she had that, there was nothing she couldn't trade, nothing she couldn't burn to ash if she needed to.

Once she had that, she was free again.

* * *

**A/N: **I'll be working on the next, and likely final bit to this arc heading into 2014. Not much else to add here, so, in the immortal words of early 90's booty-bass duo _Tag Team_: Whoomp, there it is.


	23. Chapter XXIII

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Pokemon.

**Chapter Summary:** Can things become more strange for Ash as he slips deeper down the rabbit-hole of this bizarre night-life Roxie has led him into? As it becomes clearer what Doc and Holiday are after, how will it all connect to Sabrina, waiting quietly for Ash to finish his objective? Will Max make it deep enough into Union Cave to settle the score with Onix, before Brock and Dawn tear each other's heads off?

**A/N: **Hey everybody! This chapter puts us smack in the middle of the arc, I believe. I hope everybody's pleased so far. I know the subject matter has been sort of divisive, so thanks for stickin' it out. Anyways, here we go! Enjoy.

* * *

**PKMN2K10**

**Chapter XXIII**

"Hey, Kid, Rock and Roll."

Sabrina stood in front of the window, fingers pressed to the floor-to-ceiling pane. Below was Saffron. Six months ago, all of it's writhing, seething mass had been just a thought away. Their minds meshed together, coalesced in her perception, until they were a single, massive sensory organ. She saw what they saw, heard what they heard, felt what they felt.

He powers of telepathy, persuasion, and foresight had become so massive in her late teens that she could've controlled the whole city if she wanted, and not just it's gym, but she'd taken care to ensure that her growth had been quiet and modest. The world wasn't ready for that type of leadership. Suits from Silph Co and old, dirty Viridian money maintained the veneer of power in Saffron for the time being, and that was fine. It kept other, more dangerous things out, and so long as she continued to hold them in check, they could hardly interfere with her own agendas.

She had never needed to piss on her own territory in the same way those animals did. Saffron was her city, whether anyone knew it or not. Or, at least it had been. For now, the invisible grip she'd once held on it had been broken.

She looked out across the twinkling night-time metropolis, eyes narrowing at the winking aircraft warning lights on the distant Lavender Radio Tower. Since it had gone up, and began spewing it's malignant signal out for a hundred miles in every direction, she'd been cut off from much of what gave her so much influence.

She heard the glass quietly whine under her fingers as they slid down it, pressed desperately into it's smooth face. She closed her eyes, and sighed.

She'd moved into this high-rise condo six months ago-thankfully she'd been able to manage what surface manipulation was necessary to obtain it at a laughably low price-thinking that perhaps she could overcome the disruptive frequency at this height, so far above the city miasma. That much at least, was true, her powers were much stronger here, but the lights and people were only that and nothing more-not her eyes, not her ears, not her hands. An invisible dome, emanating from Lavender Radio Tower separated her from them.

She needed Ash for this task. Disabling the tower on her own invited a deep risk into her life, and there were other roles she needed to fill, without garnering that level of attention. She'd had a few brushes with Team Rocket already, and she didn't need it to go further. Her's was not a starring portrayal. Instrumental, perhaps, but not preeminent, not even in that task.

Ash would succeed, perhaps haplessly, but he would succeed. Then, she supposed she could move into the next phase. Arceus, how badly she wanted that. To be able to reach out and touch the minds around her again. Really touch them, not just come through like radio static, but to actually get inside of them! It would only be for such a short, short while, and she did rue that, but for now she had to focus on the big picture. There was one mind, here and now, that required her. That meant the tower had to come down, whatever else it resulted in. Plain and simple.

She needed to pry into that boy, to dig out what they both needed to know, to show Ash what was inside him, and prepare him for what that thing would one day require of him, and for her own sake, so that she might know what she needed to know in order to bring the eventual outcome to fruition. He didn't want to see, but she would force him to. Hate it, respect it, or fear it, any one of those would do, but he couldn't keep on ignoring it.

...and the chain of events just needed one more push to set it all in motion.

She turned away from the window, and fell into an armchair. With both hands, she tousled her hair a bit, throwing it behind her shoulders. She fished her gear out, and prepared to take another picture. This time, she undid several more buttons of her jacket and splayed it open, exposing the black lace bra beneath.

She frowned, realizing she needed two hands to take the photograph she wanted. As a rule she tried not to use telekinesis for menial tasks, but the secret of artful photography was in the details, after all. She held the phone in place mentally, leaving it floating before her as she withdrew her hands from it, and put them to use, heaving a few breaths to bring the blood to her face. She put on the most desirous look she could manage. It wasn't perfect, but she made up for every ounce of sincerity lost with a double-dose of manipulative skill.

* * *

Ash sat in the booth like a prisoner with Stockholm syndrome, all thoughts of leaving now strangely dissolved. He'd entertained the idea at first, but being so trapped in the lie they'd told, he found he was just too embarrassed to get up and walk through the crowd in order to depart. He'd spent most of the first hour or so, angrily sipping at whatever was put in front of him, and keeping his eyes shaded and downcast. Now he sat with his hands draped ineffectually on the seat to both side of him, not quite willing to put them into action.

"I didn't even know there was a war on." he heard a couple talk in the booth behind them.

"Just goes to show how little they actually tell you on the news these days" the other responded dispassionately, as if that was the logical explanation.

"Seems a little young to have a commission, though."

"They keep getting younger all the time."

After a long pause, the other person evidently conceded. "I suppose so."

Ash had downed about four drinks now, each the most sugary and least offending that Roxie could sort out among the masses of offered beverages that had made their way over to the table, but surely to Arceus he could still get onto his own two feet and march out of this place, if he wanted to. The problem was that he didn't really want to anymore. He felt oddly at peace with everything around him. Even the couple who'd been discussing him didn't really register as a concern. The massive lie was just a little fib now, in his mind, parked just behind the blurred immediacy of what was happening now.

Ash's gear buzzed, but it took him a little while to fish it out of his pocket, partially because that nagging paranoia that his mom was somehow going to find out about this hadn't left completely, but mostly because because his arms felt funny.

He eventually palmed it out, and rubbed the side of his face with his off hand as he tried to awkwardly thumb through the menus to read his new message. It wasn't from his mom, but what it turned out to be was certainly it's own sort of distressing.

He sat there for a long while, stunned. He was sure that the thing he needed to do was delete the picture, clap the damn gear shut, and try to act like nothing happened, but instead of that, his body remained inert. Instead of that, he started to chortle. Instead of that, he tilted the gear toward Roxie, and got her attention. "Hey, look."

What the hell was wrong with him? It was like the filter between the things he was thinking, and the things he ended up doing was just gone!

"Oh, hello." Roxie looked down at the gear he was offering, and quickly snatched it up. "Who's this, then?"

The girl in the photograph had one finger in her mouth, applying teasing suction up to the second knuckle, the other hand rubbing at the inner thigh of her wide-splayed legs where black thigh-highs lapsed into pale nubile skin.

Roxie, until that moment, had been completely upside down in the booth, legs laid casually up the wall as she reclined against Ash's hip, and while she didn't seem quite as overtly drunk as someone else sitting with them, imbibing had made her louder and far less reserved, which was certainly saying something, since she was now clambering end over end to stare at the screen on his gear, compressed cheek-to-cheek with him.

Doc, the recipient of most of the drinks he'd surrendered out of distaste, had closer to ten such glasses, though most were small. He was the next best off, aside from Ash, simply sitting there with a grin and a chuckle for anything that was said to him, occasionally taking a drink of draft light beer, wiping the head from his mouth with a meticulous motion and listening just as intently as he was, though he seemed to be having trouble tearing his eyes away from the television on occasion, to give any direct attention to the commotion

Holiday, though, who'd gotten so torn up on spritzers that he couldn't quite sit still, even though he wasn't really being called on to use his sense of balance, didn't seem hindered at all by having to practically climb over the table to see the picture message. He scoffed when he saw it, and then returned to the booth seat where where he went back to swaying, and sometimes jerking in the seat, apparently just before catching himself from sliding off the lip of the seat. "Ah, that's just this slut tryina' get cozy witcha boy, there." Holiday explained, indicating Ash.

Roxie popped both eyebrows. "Just trying, then? Not exclusive?"

Ash didn't know what that meant, but Holiday answered for him. "I dunno, she looked pretty hard up for it. Real repressed, librarian sort of chick."

Roxie let out a low, libidinous laugh, a sort of "Oh-ho-ho!" Ash felt his blush increase, but he wasn't sure exactly why. There was something happening here just outside of his notice. "Just my type."

Holiday snorted. "I thought your type was battery powered with handle-bars."

Roxie only rolled her eyes. "What? You saying I can't seal the deal? I made a believer out of worse. They used to call me "The Closer" back in school, you know? I've made more straight girls scream my name than Fiorello Cappucino."

Holiday shrugged, and went back to his spritzer, clearly unimpressed.

Roxie, totally unimpeded by his lack of confidence, merely turned to Ash. "Well, mate, I'm afraid I may end up having to have a go at your hot little girlfriend," she gushed, breath heavy with liquor and passion. "And I am sorry for that. I really am. But the heart wants what the heart wants, and all that."

Ash's, now scarlet, scratched timidly at this collar-bone, where the threshold of this sudden flush of blood rested. "She's not, uh, my girlfriend."

"Oh, good, then you won't mind if I cut in." She abruptly took the phone from him, and dialed the incoming number with a deft tap. She pressed it to her ear, and reclined casually, as if confronting potential prey in a face-to-face setting.

After a few moments of silence, someone evidently answered on the other end, too quiet to hear. Roxie, however, was quite clearly audible, and unabashed. "Hullo then, you tidy little minx!"

More silence, that only made Roxie's smile increase. "This is Roxie Toxic. Yeah, as in the Roxie Toxic."

This time, the silence stole Roxie's smile, and replaced it with a frown. She pulled the phone away from her ear. "She uh, wants to talk to you," the rocker explained, handing it back to it's owner. Holiday guffawed.

"The Closer, huh?" Doc asked incredulously.

"Oi, give it time, eh? This one is gagging for it, and this gaydar of mine never gives false positives," she said, indicating the general area of her face. "I'll have this bird, mate. Just you wait and see."

"Some gaydar." Holiday snorted. "She was all"-here, he adopted a feminine falsetto-"Roxie who? Put that dreamboat Ash Ketchum on the line." The taller admin guffawed, along with his partner. "You got shown up by the one-nut-wonder."

The trio fumed and bickered while Ash had his telephone conversation, which was just fine since he was having a hard time hearing and an even harder time enunciating himself properly.

"The gaydar works just fine thank-you-very-much," Roxie huffed. "Besides, I already told you what I thought about you and your bottom bitch."

The object of Doc's laughter changed targets, moving from Roxie to Holiday with that comment, but Holiday, apparently quite confident in whatever orientation he was rocking, only looked sidelong at Doc.

"The fuck are you laughing at? You're the bottom bitch she's talking about, you know that, right?"

The humor drained from Doc's face. "Naw, man. I ain't with that gay shit."

"Ain't nothing gay about getting your dick sucked, bro. What's a couple beejers between two close compadres like us?" Holiday offered with a chortle.

Rounding on Doc, Roxie joined up with Holiday. "This seems like the perfect segue into that thing you've been working on, don't it, Holly?"

Holiday nodded sagaciously, though his gesture was slightly off the mark, being that he was rubbery from the waist up, and withdrew a carefully folded bar napkin he'd been penning feverishly upon over the last hour. "So, In light of your previous argument, that I don't use enough visual aids to get my point across, I've decided to make a pie-graph detailing the places I'm going to put my nut sack throughout the day tomorrow. As you can see, _Your Mouth_, comprises 85.4 percent of the total twenty-four hours, with _Inside Pants_ a distant second, at 13.8%, and _Other_ at 0.8%," he explained to Doc, laying it out on the table for all to see.

"I like where this is headed." Roxie said with a grin, taking the napkin from Holiday and examining it. "Arceus, that's like, over twenty hours you've got his balls scheduled in there, Doc."

Doc only shook his head, and took another drink of his beer.

Holiday ignored him, and went on talking to Roxie. "Actually to me, the really sad part is that for almost twelve minutes out of the day, I apparently don't have a good enough idea of where they are at all, to say specifically, now that I think about it. _Other_? I mean, they could literally be anywhere."

Roxie laughed. "Oi, where are your balls at, Holly?" she asked facetiously.

"Oh, they're, uh,_ Other_, at the moment." Holiday pretended to answer shamefully.

While the three of them carried on, Ash cupped the phone. "Well, what do you want me to do?"

Contrary to her appearance and the photograph, Sabrina's voice was quiet, even and plain. "Tell her anything she wants to hear, but get her to shut down the radio tower."

"Well, I mean, she's sortof interested-"

"I'm well aware of what she's interested in."

"So I mean, what-"

"Just go along with it. I'll handle it."

Ash felt himself start to blush again. "Like, handle it handle it, or-"

Sabrina sighed in a dismissive way at the childish implication. "Secure whatever deal you have to. I will make good any promise you make, as long as that tower goes down tonight. Do you understand me? That is imperative."

Ash, sobered a bit, but face scorching, answered affirmatively. "I guess so."

He hung up the phone and laid his head on the table, strangely put out, and even more strangely, slightly stimulated by what he said next. "She wants to, uh..." he turned, looking at Roxie through slightly separated fingers, as she sat there expectantly.

"Yes?" Everyone else at the table said in unison, Roxie's tone desperate for satisfaction, Holiday's thick with oncoming schadenfreude, and Doc's hopeful of an impending change of topic.

He tried not to picture it in his head, but his teenage hormones made it all to easy for imagination to run wild over his buckled resolve. The thought of Roxie, eyes patently lascivious, descending down overtop of the normally so straight and proper Sabrina, one hand kneading its way inside of that lavender blouse to slide under the partially revealed negligee and take a full advantage of the overflowing hand's-worth of pale, pink-tipped breast while the other took a commanding grip of raven hair and used it to propel the both of them into an open mouthed kiss, where lightly pink and acid blue tinted lips collided and gradually made a light shade of purple through urgent and insistent mixing.

He sat upright and cleared his throat. "Date. She wants to go on a date," he ventured, trying not to sound like he'd been leading up to something else.

Roxie shrugged. "I'll take it." She pumped her arm once across the table. "Told ya. Fuckin' Closer!"

Holiday let out a puff of air, and scoffed "Date? Not DTF? Lame."

"But," Ash went on, trying not to sound like he had no idea what DTF meant, since he wasn't sure how it pertained to what he'd said.

"But?" Roxie perked.

"She wants something from you first." Ash admitted.

"Sure," Roxie said at once.

"It's sorta big."

Roxie shrugged. "Lay it on me."

Ash leaned over a bit, indicating that he wanted to whisper. Roxie obliged him, throwing her arm over his shoulder and leaning in conspiratorially so that the other two could neither see nor hear.

He told her very plainly and concisely what he needed, and as he did that, and she in turn began to slowly reel away, he saw that she was beginning to realize just how huge of a thing he was asking for. Either that, or maybe he was beginning to.

"You want me to do _what_?"

He nodded, trying to impart the same grave seriousness that Sabrina had.

"Shit, Ash, I'm gonna need quite a few more drinks in me before I even consider that one. That's a tall order, even for me."

He supposed it wasn't an explicit no. but there was a lot more at stake here than just some girl-on-girl make-out session, no matter how fast it had gotten his blood pumping. This was about a badge. About a journey, and a promise he'd made to complete it. "Well, Sabrina is a very special girl."

"That she is, mate" Roxie conceded halfheartedly, looking as though she was doing a great deal of thinking all at once, none of it particularly pleasant. "Just, ah...gimme a while to think on it, eh?"

He didn't know if he could hope for anything better. He glanced at Pikachu, who gave him a bracing look, and then he grabbed his own glass, still half full of some syrupy red stuff. He looked at it briefly. "What did you say this was again?"

"A Cerulean Sunset," Roxie said, with a muted chuckle. "Must be ladies night."

"What's in it?"

Holiday snorted. "Not much. Orange juice, pineapple juice, grenadine. I think they might wave it in the general direction of some rum, but that's about all."

"Oh, you're one to talk, sitting over there like a delicate doily, sipping your carbonated dessert wine," Roxie countered dryly.

Everyone at the table seemed to delight a little in Holiday getting knocked down a peg, but Holiday was too blitzed to notice and went right on drinking without so much as a crass comment.

Roxie gave Ash a quick nudge. "Cheers, eh?"

* * *

Archer placed both of his hands down on the glass of his designer office desk, which must've told Butch and Cassidy that he disapproved quite sternly. Archer was not a passionate or animated man, being rather the cold, calculating sort.

It was a quality that contrasted his relative youth. At thirty, he'd been the youngest of several candidates for interim boss, and being voted in by his admin peers unanimously did somewhat cement the idea that he was a level-headed, competent leader. And he was. He had a lot of experience within both the corporate power-structure of Silph Co, and the criminal heirarchy of the Team. He'd earned the shield emblem he once wore on his lapel, in every sense of the word, and though the team no longer wore it's colors out on the streets, he was still an escutcheon-bearing member of the team.

He'd seen it all, Butch and Cassidy knew. You didn't wear the shield emblem unless you'd done something truly noteworthy, and gruesome for the sake of the Team.

Archer had reached inside the core of the team in the last of their glory-days, before the two of them had even gotten their patch. He'd witnessed the slow fall of Team Rocket in a way that was more manifest and more sincere than any other. To Archer, there was no reminiscence of the days of plenty. Those were a mere blip on the radar in his sixteen years with the team. To him, there had only been the slow and eminent decline, in the way of a Durant slowly falling into a Trapinch pit, sometimes scuttling a bit further up the slope, but never escaping it's ultimate fate.

Yet, Archer had saved face, even in the light of all that. Archer had stood atop the wreckage of the Team that Giovanni had abandoned, and guided Silph Co, their legitimate business conglomerate to heightened levels of commercial success, in a time where multi-trillion pokedollar foreign ventures and pending corporate collapse of domestic enterprise was at it's worst.

"Were we able to get a positive ID on either of them?" He asked, his intonations blank of any preconception.

He was not the yeller and screamer that Giovanni had been, but yet he was the engineer of everything that had kept them together in this dark time, so he was almost more difficult to take dressing down from. When they had to tell him no, it was like choking up lead weights.

"Explain."

Butch let out a breath. "We did catch them on one of the loading dock cameras, but the images are not high enough resolution. One of them got close enough to it to pick out a few features from the CCTV recording.. Dark skin, dark hair. Sinnohan maybe. The other didn't get close enough to pick out anything important, and disabled the camera entirely, shortly thereafter."

Archer raised one questioning eyebrow. "Disabled?"

"Hacked into them with some sort of short-range wireless device. Likely a gear or transceiver modified with homebrew Bluetooth-WiFi-Cellular software. The eggheads in R&D are digging into it, but they seem pretty confident that they're not going to come up with anything solid. Whoever they these guys are, they're not amateurs. They knew exactly how to undermine the security system."

Archer sat still, contemplative for a moment, before leaning back in his seat. "They mined very specific data out of the server, as well. Were you aware?"

Cassidy looked at Butch, who shrugged. "No sir. We were told the data was eyes-only."

Archer pressing both hands together by his fingertips, let out a low, humming sound, both acknowledging their answer, and contemplating his response. "Do you remember, three years ago, when Giovanni tried to establish a new Team HQ inside of Silph tower, after he was forced to resign as the Viridian City Gym Leader? Team members from all over Kanto came to the coronation ceremony."

"Yeah. Of course. Everyone does. That ex-champion kid. What was his name?"

"Red." Cassidy offered.

"Yes. Red infiltrated the complex, and battled his way to the top of Silph tower, incapacitating and injuring any Rocket operative that got in his way. He was only stopped just shy of Mr. Giovanni's penthouse by Executive Ariana, Operative Pierce, and myself, and even that came at great cost to the company, and the Team."

"So what does that have to do with the data?"

"I'm getting there. Let me ask you another question. Do you recall, how only a short time after the battle with Red, it was decided, because of the tower having suffered significant damage in the attack, that the proposed Team HQ would need be temporarily moved to a former apartment complex procured by a Silph Co. subsidiary on behalf of the Team?"

"Yeah. It burned down, or something, didn't it?"

"Within hours of the purchase."

The two operatives sat there, quietly bewildered.

"There were thirteen similar events in total, each one stymieing any further attempt to establish Team power in Saffron City. A purchase of east-side property folded when a seller withdrew his offer, and dropped off the map, after having previously seemed quite willing to sell at any price we asked. Another mid-town property was raided by police on suspicion of organized prostitution, again, within hours of occupation, resulting in sixty months of cumulative jail-time among the Team members who were apprehended. Following that there was a structural collapse, a board of public health and welfare condemnation, two gas-leak explosions, a sinkhole, and five rezoning occurrences resulting in foreclosure by the Saffron City Department of Ordinance."

"Sounds like awful luck." Butch offered.

"Sounds like someone didn't want the Team getting a foothold in Saffron." Cassidy suggested, instead.

Archer lifted a finger, and used it to indicate Cassidy. "That seemed the growing suspicion at the time."

"Who then? Red?"

"You know who leads the Gym in this City, correct?"

Cassidy shook her head no, but Butch nodded. "Yeah. Sabrina. I've talked to a couple of the Grunts who say they've bumped into her. Rumor is, crossing paths with her is very bad mojo. One of the guys I know was hit by a car just a few seconds after he passed her on the sidewalk. She's supposedly some sort of Doomsayer, or something."

"She has certain unique abilities that are not fully understood," Archer agreed, and left it at that.

Cassidy frowned. "Is the data they took about her?"

Archer, deciding that it was best not to say too much about something that was so delicate to Team Members that were not yet fully vetted, sat with lips sealed. He had a certain amount of confidence in Butch and Cassidy, being that he had sponsored them, and cast the deciding vote in their membership appeal, but they were only just a cut above Grunts, he reminded himself.

They were just as much liability as they were asset. Ariana had kept him from making a fool of himself during these years of his own career, but there was a wide margin of difference between what he'd endured in the turbulence of the team's internal power-shift, and the relatively comfortable life of company pensions and paid vacation these two enjoyed.

Instead of elaborating, and more fully fleshing out the nature of the data, Archer nodded his accord with her quick-cutting assumption. "It is. We can therefore assume that whoever these trespassers are, they are acting in her interest."

Butch huffed. "I don't get it. If this Sabrina girl has it out for the Team, why don't we just send someone to slit her throat, and be done with it?"

They had, he almost admitted.

Domino, the special Rocket operative who had served as Giovanni's personal protector, liaison, spy, had been sent to do just that, as a matter of fact. It had been Ariana's idea, though he'd supported it as well, under the circumstances.

He'd resented having to acknowledge the power and skill of someone who was referred to by such cheesy titles as 009 or The Black Tulip, but she'd served under Giovanni with an undeniably high degree of success and almost frightening effectiveness. She wasn't cut from the same cloth as other operatives he'd once known, but she was no slouch, certainly.

She'd accepted the task with relish, and detailed her plan to strangle the young, and admittedly frail-looking psychic with a garrote while she slept, showing off the deep, dark purple tulip that was her calling card, and guarantee of success to be left behind on the pillow of her victim.

Domino, or at least something that was once Domino, had survived that failed assassination attempt, apparently only by clutching that wilted tulip like a life-line. They'd found her screaming in the streets the following morning, raving about the monsters all around her, as she waved that tiny little plant-clipping like it was the hilt of a sword, striking blindly at anyone who tried to help her.

They had managed to drag her into a car only at great lengths and nearly had to beat her to death to keep her from leaping out of it, on the long ride back to Saffron General. Ariana had preferred taking her out onto route 8 and finishing the job, putting the operative out of her own misery and tying off loose ends in the Team manner, but he'd objected on the grounds that they might learn something integral if Domino could recover.

She hadn't.

Doctors had kept her under with anesthetics for seventy-two hours, analyzing brain activity, to little or no avail, and eventually seeing no choice, had taken her off of anesthesia for transport to the Lavender Town Psychiatric Institute.

Whatever she'd seen in those three days of sleep, however, had only compounded her suffering, and she'd ended it all in a scuffle with the doctors, by driving a set of hemostats into own her eye-socket, gruesomely, and without any hesitation at all. She'd only just gasped, in that quiet way a person does when they are finally able to relax, after a long period of stress.

The official medical report was suicidal self-inflicted penetrative head trauma resulting in fatal brain-hemorrhaging as a result of drug-induced hysteria, which in the opinion of the chief medical director was more or less typical of former Team Rocket thugs with the unfortunate exception of suicide-he'd only threatened the hospital with a libel case if they didn't add "former" to the report, of all things, because he'd been desperate to keep the matter open and shut. The autopsy returned no evidence of drugs, but he'd used his connections to have that diagnosis ramrodded through as truth, just to make it go away.

The following day he'd received a chilling text-message from a blocked number, that had never turned up any leads...

_**Please, never send me flowers again. I hope I have made it clear how I despise you and yours.**_

"The matter is somewhat more complicated than that," he offered, in lieu of an explanation.

Butch, obviously put off by that response, leaned back in his seat with crossed arms. "Sheesh."

Cassidy, less offended, asked the important question. "What do you want us to do?"

Archer considered it for a moment. "It's pointless to chase these individuals. You have no leads and no IDs. However, if they have that data, then there's only one place they'll be going."

He tapped a few fingers across his touch-sensitive console, and then turned the display so that they could see a photograph of their intended destination. "The Kanto Radio Tower. You will lay in wait for these two characters to arrive, recapture the data, and discourage any further trespasses in the harshest terms possible."

Butch, evidently liking those orders, smirked. "And if they don't walk away from this discouragement we give them?"

Archer, shrugging knowingly, betrayed only the smallest wisp of smile. "So long as the heat never lands on the Team, all the better."

* * *

Feeling like he was attached to the rest of his body by a balloon string, Ash wondered when they'd gotten so close the the bar. He knew he was thirsty again, and that the closer he got to the bar, the sooner some smiling face was clapping a drink into his hand, so he supposed it made sense that all four of them were wedged in sideways and practically hunched over the bar.

There was too much talking going on, so nobody seemed to notice him standing there, though. Instead of waving or hollering, which seemed like a terrible amount of expended effort, he nudged Roxie. "I need an..." he began, then stopped feeling himself keel sideways, and dangerously off balance. Roxie, though, reached to right him with a handful of blazer. She was obviously lit as well, but seemed to be on much better footing than the rest of them, tempered by experience.

"I feel thirst in my mouth," he amended, smacking his tongue. Though his sentence structure left something to be desired, Roxie got the picture.

Mimicking his less than subtle attempts, Roxie leveled her own query. "What kind of drink goes in you, then?"

"Yes," he agreed. Not quite the elucidating response she'd hoped for, but it would serve. She'd been feeding him straight shots of Tequila for a half-hour now, so it seemed like he'd scoured his mouth clean of any want or desire for fruity cocktails. She imagined he'd probably drink Gasoline at this point.

She ought to have handed him a glass of water, from the looks of him, but where was the sense in spoiling a positive learning experience? She laughed.

"What's wrong wiff the one you're holding, then?"

He looked down at a half-finished drink he didn't even realize he was holding. He didn't even know what it was, really. It looked sort of greenish, with little flecks of purple glitter in it. The glitter was all over his fingers too, he realized.

"Where did this stuff come from?"

"From the girl next to you." Doc offered helpfully, somewhere off behind him, coming up from another beer to do so.

Ash felt like it took forever to look over at the person standing next to him. A very skinny girl - lady, actually, he would've said, since she was far older than him - with bleach-blonde hair stood at the bar next to him, hair and cleavage replete with eye-catchingly purple body-glitter. Which of course gave rise to a question. A question he wouldn't have dared ask, under any normal circumstance, but yet one that flew right of his mouth now.

"Why did she rub this drink all over herself before she gave it to me?" He asked, since it seemed the only logical possibility.

"She didn't. You did that. Before you took it from her." Holiday responded, catching Ash by surprise as he snaked in between Roxie and the young trainer, to intercept a full bottle of expensive looking champagne.

"...Why?" he asked, unable to really connect the events in his mind.

"Coz you are three sheets to the fucking wind, Ash. Also, you both may want to duck, totty looks none too happy about it, either." Roxie explained in a rush.

He wanted to follow her advice, but his reaction was way too slow. The hay-maker slap didn't really hurt, since he already seemed pretty well disconnected from his body in all but the most superficial way. It only seemed like a dull sound heard to his left, as though there were a big glass dome around his head, but it did knock him in almost a complete spiral, where his stolen drink spilled all over Holiday.

Holiday, who evidently only got more confrontational and hostile when he was intoxicated, wasted no time in popping the cork off his bottle straight at the young trainer's face. Ash's terribly late reaction to Roxie's warning came through for him when he dipped under the pressurized cork and icy deluge of chilled champagne. It splashed right into the glittered chest of the girl who'd whalloped him, washing glitter, ice, and expensive alcohol straight into her face.

His three companions all started dying with laughter. Holiday slumped over the bar and started slapping it as Doc tried not to shoot beer out of his nose, and Roxie cackled in her shrill, ear-piercing way..

"Did you see that?!" Holiday yowled, voice muffled in the folds of his shirt.

"Holy shit!" Doc cried.

"Her tits made like, the perfect ramp!" Roxie noted, with great bemusement, mimicking the uphill motion in a very crude way.

Words even burbled out of his own mouth, though he had no real idea where the desire to speak them had come from. "It was all like: 'Bwoosh!'" he exclaimed enthusiastically.

Ash felt his phone buzz, and it seemed like a century before he was able to wrangle his phone out of his pocket, amidst the drenched shrieking of the woman beside him, and the raucous laughter all around. _**You're about to get thrown out**_, it read. He turned just in time to see the bouncers coming for them.

The sight filled him with a righteous indignance. "You can't throw me out! I've only got one ball!" Ash roared in nonsensical defiance, gathering Pikachu up in preparation for being proven quite wrong as one of the gigantic men wrapped him up about the middle and slung him like a bag of poke-chow. Figuring the best thing to do at this point was keep his friend out of the roil below, and so held Pikachu above his head as he was carried to the door, and deposited not so gently outside.

Another, hoisting Holiday by a handful of his collar, ejected him from his seat by a hand hooked under his belt. They had a little harder time with Roxie, since she proved to be a lot better in a scuffle than Holiday, perhaps because she was by far the most sober of the bunch and was all elbows, besides. She took the worst fall of the four of them, though. Doc put up a somewhat more passive resistance, but in doing he maintained his dignity somewhat better as well. Of all of them, he was the only one who didn't get tossed to the cement, since he managed an awkward two-point landing, one hand still holding his beer aloft as the other tried to slow his momentum.

Ash only seemed to give up on the notion of trying to muscle his way back in when he saw Holiday get punched in the eye for trying, before he could. Roxie, not shied up at all by the prospect, and bolstered by a strong sense of social immunity through fame, lunged for the door as well. In her defense, she did manage to throw a pretty mean-looking right cross, but once security was done dealing with Holiday (something that took an embarrassingly short amount of time) one of the bouncers gave her a punch in the nose that knocked her on her ass and took the piss clean out of her.

Indignantly scrambling up from the pavement to dust himself off and wipe at her bloodied nose, Roxie pinched one nostril shut with her thumb, snorted what had to have been a significant amount of blood from the sound of things, spat, then let out a whoop. "I've been thrown out a better pubs 'eniss anyhow!"

Doc, finally regaining his balance, double checked the lip of his ale for any dribbles, then, finding none, went to take another drink. He would have managed it too, if Holiday hadn't snatched it by the neck and hurled it after the receding security man who'd so rapidly shamed him. The bottle missed cleanly, but it didn't stop the cadre of four bouncers that had so readily disposed of them from turning on their heels, now spoiling for a proper fight.

Holiday and Roxie both made vulgar gestures in one and two-fingered varieties before cutting a retreat down the pavement. Doc followed a slight pout evident on his face, and luckily Ash came up with the good sense to leave as well.

Ash felt dazed after running, but couldn't have said anymore how they got to where they were going next, than he could have explained why everything seemed so warped, and his senses kept blurring into one another. Some things were dull, and others sharp, and he couldn't stop himself from turning his head to look at things as they passed them, no matter how mundane or uninteresting they were. Roxie just kept pulling on his blazer, and he kept fumbling along.

"Split up!" Roxie urged, keeping a brisk pace in spite of the fact that Ash was running as much up the back of her moccasins as across the pavement

"I'll call you later!" Holiday said, more than happy to oblige, as he and Doc hustled in the opposite direction.

* * *

Max didn't really believe that the route they'd taken through Union cave had seemed nearly this confining on the first trip. He stopped, and tried to suck in a deep breath as he felt the heaviness of cave walls closing in from all sides. It wasn't just the sheer weight of this tidal-carved cavern-system that was pushing down on him, of course, but that was bad enough all on his own.

There was the lingering hurt he still felt because of his split with Onix, certainly, but he'd found, as the trip went on, that the growing tension between Brock and Dawn was almost as disconcerting. He felt pretty miserable watching them fight over what to do about him, so he didn't want to linger too long, for fear that they would start in on each other again.

The last time he'd felt the claustrophobia of a damp, dark cave closing in around him, he had expressed some second thoughts, which of course had kicked off a huge argument that had only moments ago come to a close.

Brock, ever the reassuring elder had been quick to provide affirmation. "You don't have to keep going if you don't want to. We can head back to Goldenrod right now, if -"

Dawn however, had wanted nothing to do with the notion of turning back. "Oh, you'd just love that, wouldn't you? Let's all go back so Brock can catch up on the beauty-rest he's missing out on! Nobody would want him to be the slightest bit inconvenienced!"

"Will you give it a rest, Dawn? Why on earth do you think this is about me?"

"Because it clearly is!" Dawn had screamed at the top of her lungs, dropping the lap on the ground and barreling past Max to point an accusing finger at Brock's face. "You can't stand the fact that you didn't know it was a girl Onix either, and you don't want to find out you were wrong!"

Brock cleared his throat, and swallowed. Max could see, even in the overturned lamplight, that the gym leader objected to having his expertise concerning Rock Pokemon questioned, or worse, repudiated. It was a small wonder he didn't start roaring as well. Instead, he stood straight, and looked straight at the cavern wall rather than at his twelve year old aggressor. When he responded, it was no longer the exasperated sighs he'd met her protests with before, but a arid, terse whisper through clenched teeth. "Dawn. You're being ridiculous. Drop it."

"No! No, I wont! Max needs to get right with this, and if he has to do that with me shoving him every step of the way, and dragging your butt along kicking and screaming, then fine! I don't get why you're being such a jerk all of a sudden!"

He'd leapt in then, seeing Brock's lips begin to gnarl around his teeth, and not quite sure that he could handle whatever the next level of anger was from Brock. He'd never seen the Gym Leader fly into a rage, and he wasn't about to now. "It's alright!" he'd promised. "I'm fine, we can keep going."

The back and forth hadn't died right then and there, and he hadn't worked up the guts to tell them both that he wished they'd stop making this harder than it needed to be, by bickering back and forth over his head while he tried to wrap his brain around it. Valuing the silence and the shaky truce, he pushed himself upright, and kept on walking. He went on for a long as he could, he really did, but eventually the closeness and heaviness of the cave, all of it's many hundreds of thousands of tons got to be too much for him to handle again, and he had to stop again. He rubbed his eyes, as he tried to stop gasping.

Why was this only happening now? Last time it had been so easy! Before it had seemed like nothing, but now he felt so restricted, so uncomfortable, like he had no room to stretch out or move, even though there was thirty feet of open space to either side of him in the massive chamber they'd entered. He slumped amidst a cluster of boulders, leaning hard against one with his shoulder.

He planned on opening his mouth to tell that he felt sick, that he really did need to go back, but that he was too scared, but Brock and Dawn were already calling his name, screaming it, actually. He'd gasped and sputtered to tell them that he was fine, but already he could hear them rushing toward him.

He felt the tight embrace of Brock encircle him, or at least, that was what he'd assumed it was initially. Dawn's blood-curdling scream though, seemed to say otherwise. The embrace felt too tight, suddenly, painfully so, as it pulled him upright. Upright and further, he realized, as the toes of his sneakers raked the ground. He pried open his eyes against the elevating sense of dread to see what was happening.

There she was, looking huge and angry in the shadow she cast against the far wall in the lamplight, as she lifted him from the floor of the cavern with her hard, stony tail.

"Onix." he rasped, nearly unable to breath in the tightness of the squeeze. He couldn't get to Raltz's poke ball, he couldn't even call for help. He looked into those eyes, so piercing at wide with anger and unchecked aggression, knowing what was going to happen next before anyone else did.

Max felt the wind rushing in his ears as he was hurled across the chamber with a tail whip, but in all it was a strange, weightless feeling. He really didn't feel the moment of impact, just heard the gruesome crunch and snap of flesh and bone meeting solid, heavy stone, as if the blow had thrown his consciousness clean out of his body. The pain was there, but somehow far away, dull and cloudy.

He saw his friends rushing across the cavern floor their shoes and the feet of many, many of their Pokemon clambering skewed at an angle as they ran desperately toward a fight with Onix.

Onix, his first captured Pokemon, who had cast him aside, betrayed and even attacked him outright, now.

When he heard Onix roaring, battle joining and Dawn's continued wailing of "He's dead, he's dead!" even as she and her Pokemon fought back, Max thought for sure she was right. He had no idea what he looked like, but he was sure it wasn't good. He felt something hot and wet leak down into his ear, and his hair felt damp.

Realizing what it had to be, he started to cry, but then finding that it hurt far less to stay quiet and close his eyes, he just tried to lay still. Everything kept spinning and suddenly all he wanted was to go to sleep, to wake up and find out that this was all a miserable dream.

That's all this is. Just a dream, he thought, as he let himself drift off into a deeper unconsciousness.

* * *

Ash and Pikachu climbed out of the dumpster they'd hid themselves in once the coast was clear. It had been mostly empty, thankfully, but that didn't stop the clinging garbage smell from following them once they'd left it. Pikachu who'd mostly been tucked under his arm had been spared the brunt of it, but he reeked.

The two bouncer's who'd followed them down the alley had kept right on, heading out on to the street at the north end of the alley, so naturally, when they'd full extricated themselves, they opted the southerly route.

Roxie didn't seem to mind so much the rotten, fetid smell, or else didn't notice. She stopped to shake an old banana-peel off of her pant leg, but that was all. Once they had cleared the alleyway, the smell dissipated a bit, but not much. Ash sniffed his own clothes, but then gagged.

Roxie noticed him then, standing there with his tongue halfway ejected from his mouth. "Gonna toss your cookies, then? Seems a little early for that, if you ask me. You could head back and do it over the lip of the bin, if you feel like a real gentleman. I'd rather not see what you had for lunch."

Ash only shook his head no, and pinched his nose.

"Oh, the smell." She paused to sniff herself as well, and took two or three shots at it before she finally pronounced her verdict. "Yeah, that's ripe, alright."

"Ripe? That makes me throw up wanna throw up!"

Pikachu, much like his trainer voiced similar lack of appreciation. "Pika piikachu!"

Roxie smirked in response to the colorfulness of his remark. "Well we wouldn'ta had to jump in there if you could put one foot in front of the other, now would we?"

He rolled his lips around. He didn't want to outright admit he'd been the cause of this, but he knew that if he didn't give the matter of staying upright real focus, he'd end up on his ass right in the middle of any protest to the contrary. "Sorry, I feel weird. Like, really wierd," he admitted at length.

"Sawrite. I can't really smell it that much anyways."

"Can't smell it?" Ash gasped, eyes still watering intensely. "It smells like how bricks feel. In the face."

Roxie tutted. "Well, you spend half your life training Poison-type Pokemon, you kind of lose your sense of smell. I mean, you lot think the Muk you have here are bad. Try a Garbodour on for size some time. Besides, we got a change of clothes tucked away in your backpack, don't we?", she suggested brightly. "Lets have it, then. Me first."

Ash too distracted by a fleeting feeling of curiosity, let her slide the pack off his shoulders to fall on the ground behind him. She frowned when he dropped it, but he just shrugged.

"Stand here, look out for anyone coming by." Roxie instructed, backing into the alley a ways, after digging out her clothes.

"You're just gonna change out here?!" Ash questioned with a gasp. "In fron' of everybody?"

"Wouldn't be the first time my bits ended up in the papers. Just keep an eye out, would you?"

Ignoring the obvious question of when and why her _bits_ had ended up exposed in public previously, he chose another safer line of inquiry as he turned his back on her and leered out into the street.

"You trained Pokemon, huh?"

"Yeah, sure. I was the Virbank Gym Leader wasn't I?"

Ash shrugged. "I dunno."

Roxie thought about it, throwing her windbreaker off and wriggling to get ahold of the tie-strings on her bikini behind her back. "I suppose that would be a little before your time."

"And Unova's a little outside my purview." Ash scoffed, then backpedaled. "Did I use that right?"

"Oddly, yes." The ex-Gym Leader admitted, with a quirked brow. "Anyways, yeah, I used to train Pokemon. I was pretty good too. Taught Danny everything he knows, actually." Roxie added, once she'd taken off her top.

Chilled night wind blew through the alleyway. Even Ash felt it, blasted as he was, and wiggled his shoulders a bit to let the shiver pass. Summer was closeby, no doubt, but the long fingers of Jack Frost stretched well through spring in Kanto.

With severity Roxie cupped herself. "Hard enough to cut glass." she noted. "Uh, I suppose it _is_ a bit cool. Pass us your jacket, luv?"

He sighed and went to shrug off his blazer, but she scoffed. "Not that one, it's all gross, too so what would be the point of that? I'm just gonna use it to say warm, so lemme have yours. The one in the bag. Pass it over!"

Without thinking he turned to dig it out of his backpack which she'd left set at his heels, and then flinched, realizing that he was copping an eyeful. Roxie guffawed, covering herself only halfheartedly, and he dropped the backpack before spinning rigidly back into place.

"Get it yourself!" Ash hissed, that rail-straight Pokemon Corps stance taking over again in spite of his drunkenness, once he heel-kicked the bag in her direction.

"Awrite, awrite," she managed between cackles. "S'your fault, though."

Ash said nothing, brain suddenly alive with those thoughts he'd assumed he had earlier banished. Thoughts of Roxie and Sabrina together in a way that seemed way too stirring to contemplate for more than a few seconds without a smile cracking his face in two, enhanced somewhat by greater insight. He shook his head roughly. "Just hurry up, would you?"

Roxie made an affirmative grunt, but then gasped a little, once the garment slipped over her shoulders. "Ooh, I like this jacket. This is really nice, actually. Where did you get this? I don't see any tags on it, even."

Ash muttered. "It was made for me."

"Tailored clothes?" Roxie remarked, obviously impressed. "We are the young sophisticate!"

"Sure," Ash hiccuped.

"Hell, I think I might just wear your clothes instead."

Ash scoffed, suddenly no longer that impressed by her compliments, once it became clear what she was driving at. "What am I gonna wear, then? Your dress?"

Roxie countered sarcastically, "What, don't think you could pull it off?"

Ash felt a strange sort of indignance roil in his stomach then. Surely it wouldn't make a difference one way or another, but he felt cross at the implication. "Oh," he began to laugh, slowly, his voice building to incredulity. "I don't think you realize who you're talking to. If you knew how many times I'd dressed up a girl, you wouldn't even bother-"

"Arceus, you are soused! No matter, put it on." Roxie urged. "Put it on then, let's have it!" She buttoned up the jacket across her bare chest, stopping halfway through her quick-change to offer the garment in question, bizarrely intrigued by the notion of seeing him in it.

With a mixture of black anxiety that he was too drunk to recognize as shame, and a sense of competitive pride, he snatched it and started pulling off his own shirt over his head. "Don't get mad when I make it look better than you."

Roxie didn't offer him as much privacy as he had her, reclining against the brick wall at the mouth of the alley, so he snuck behind the dumpster, and began shedding his blazer and shirt. He pulled the dress down over himself, finding it a bit loose about the sleeves, but quite snug about the middle. He wiggled it down over his hips and then stepped back out.

Even shrouded as he was in the darkness, she tutted. "You're forgetting something, aren't you?"

"Your dress, not mine." With a frown and a harrumph, he hiked the dress up a little, and slid his boxers, along with the extra-short basketball shorts down off his rear, too drunk and standoffish to care if she caught a glimpse of what he was working with, before he could ruffle the skirt back down.

"Kudos on the authenticity. I'd offer you my knickers, but I don't imagine it would offer quite the accommodations you're used to." She chuckled. "What I was talking about, however, was the boots. Let's see you strap these bad-boys on" She rummaged about in the bag and wrenched out one of the knee-highs, along with one of Ash's sneakers. She laid them sole to sole comparing sizes. "Looks close enough. If you're such a queen, let's see you walk in these."

He looked down. The boots he'd selected at the Drink Drank did clash a bit, and he wasn't about to have her thinking he would back down now, that his business was literally dangling in the wind. "Throw em over here."

She did, and he stomped his way out of the boots he was in, kicking his way into hers, which were just a bit tight. He balanced steadily on them, focusing hard on not letting his own inebriation affect his gait as he walked.

"Oh, fuck me, that is grand." Roxie commented, giving him a lecherous glare. "How many times did you say you'd gone out in drag? You're handling those platforms pretty expertly, I must say."

"I dunno, three, maybe four times?" He answered, finally stepping back out of the alleyway, with a quick clip-clop of the thick patent leather boots. "I always had a wig before, though. Does it look weird?"

"No, I think the close-crop really cements the punk-rocker lesbian look you were going for." Roxie said without so much as a sarcastic snort.

He wasn't sure he knew what she was talking about, but he shrugged anyways. "Whatever. Deal with it."

"Hold still. I gotta get a picture of this." She held up a slim black gear, and angled her head a bit. "You don't mind, of course."

Ash thought about it. He was already sure there was a lot he was going to regret about tonight, and he imagined that stripping in public and dressing up like a girl was going to be the least of his problems, practically speaking, if his mother found out. Besides, who was going to recognize him like this? Brock had never been able to pick up on it, and he was a guy who could tell individual Jennies and Joys apart! "I'm not gonna be all over the internet by tomorrow, am I?"

"Oh no. This is strictly for my personal use." She assured, giving him a look like the one he'd seen her give the picture of Sabrina. He shifted a bit, preemptively, realizing that there was now nothing to hide his bizzare arousal at that idea, but a thin layer of already stretched lycra, and tried to shut his brain off.

There was nothing for it. "Okay, now trade me back," he demanding, bundling his hands in front of himself.

Roxie pouted, but he objected very firmly to the idea of continuing the night in this way. It was a pointless notion anyways, since most of his clothes were too short, or too narrow for her anyways. Annoyingly, that didn't stop her from trying. She couldn't get his pants on over her thighs.

"You are built like a goddamn Surskit, with your tiny little legs," she complained.

Ash ignored her, and winched his drawers back up under the dress, and got back into his own traveling gear, while Roxie changed out of the rest of the second hand clothes in a flash. Pikachu for one, seemed thankful for the switch, crawling up into the hood of Ash's sweatshirt, and rolling himself up in it like a papoose. Ash gave him a favorable, if sloppy scratch on his ears, the only part of him left protruding. It was way past the time he and Pikachu normally went to bed.

Roxie, Ash's jacket still tossed over her shoulders, threw an arm across his. She showed him the picture she'd taken. "Have yourself a butcher's at that! Scrumptious. I don't think even Holly coulda pulled off that look."

Ash tried not to even let that thought invade his mind, instead, shrugging off her arm and rolling his eyes. "What's with you an' him anyhow? Is he like, an ex-boyfriend or somethin'?" He stumbled a bit without her support, but he kept right on.

"No! Arceus, no. Holly?" Roxie gasped, but then conceded a bit. "Though, I suppose he does sort of seem the sort who'd spoil a woman's taste for cock, so I can see as how you might make that connection."

Ash's eyes widened, but he said nothing at first.

"Figuratively, I mean." Roxie amended. "Anyways, no. Holly's just an old friend. First person I was introduced to at Pokemon Tech, if you can believe that."

"The friend part is what I have trouble believing." Ash admitted, disdainfully.

Roxie sighed and grew quiet. "Like I said before, he wasn't always such an intolerable bastard."

Ash groaned, positive he didn't want to hear whatever stupid story she had to tell about that fucking lame-ass. He hated Holiday's guts, and he was sure the feeling was mutual. Stubbornly, he kept on walking for a while, or at least his best approximation of it. It was easier going in his own shoes, but it was hard to keep his feet following a steady track. He infrequently bumped into Roxie's shoulder, and as she'd become very quiet and distant, it was up to him to correct his own course.

Knowing that he was going to want to strangle himself for asking, but quite uncomfortable with this tight-lipped, quiet Roxie, who was so different than the girl who seemed not to understand the concept of personal space, he surrendered. She wanted to talk about it, clearly, and he didn't see as how he could put her off any longer. And maybe, just maybe there was a bit of sick curiosity in him on the subject. "What was he like?" Ash groaned.

Roxie, brightening a little, smiled, though it was only in passing. "Well, he was always a bit strange, really. Sortof a boffin, I guess. Real clever, very opinionated. He always had a mischievous streak, I suppose, being that he and I got on so well, but he was never mean or vicious. He was actually quite a sweet guy, deep down, though he'd have denied the hell out of that. None of this shit you see now started happening until he was in the accident."

Ash squinted his eyes, hating himself even as he prompted her further. "Accident?" Ash tried to imagine some terrible chemical compound that turned you into an asshole if you spilled it on your skin.

"Well, about a year ago, Holly and I were a lot tighter than we are now. This was after Doc had gone off to complete his post-grad work with Bruno, you see. Holly was just finishing his first big academia project with a brain-tank at Pokemon U in Goldenrod. At the time he and I were keeping in pretty close contact."

"And?" Ash asked, brow now flattened impatiently.

"One night, I was doing a show in Ecruteak and after the gig I get this phone-call from Goldenrod Memorial. So I pick it up, and they tell me that there's been a terrible lab accident and that Holly had been hurt, and that I'd better get there in a hurry, because they didn't think he was gonna make it. I took the tour bus and bailed, on the spot. Left the band, all the gear. Holly was like a bruvah to me, yanno. He'd been with me through some heavy shit, and so when they said get there, I was there. I must've got that bus up to one-ninety, coming down Route 35. When I got there, he was all laid out like you see in the movies. Hooked up to all these tubes and hoses to keep him from going all vegetable-like. Scary thing, to see someone you care about that way, mate. You get this feeling like you just might explode, and there's not a damn thing you or anyone can do about it. Awful. I mean, he didn't even look banged up at all, just like someone had taken the batteries, out, yanno?"

Ash, some of his gumption now chastened, stared back at her while she told her story, his eyes slowly softening as she told her tale.

"I spoke with the chief research scientist involved with the project Holly'd been working on, he was there. Ein, I think, was his name. He said Holly'd been trapped inside of this device, while it was active. It was all just scientific jargon, mostly, except for one bit, which I understood perfectly well. He said that whatever type of the machine put out had caused permanent brain damage. He said that there actually was a fairly good likelihood that Holly would wake up, but that I should expect some significant changes. Dementia, he said, seemed the most likely.

"He was a different sort of person after that." She said with a misleading smile. "Well, you see how 'e is. Can't get a word in edgewise without him using it against you. It did give Holly a sort of dementia, I suppose. but here I was, gearing up to having to watch the poor bastard be spoon-fed or treated like an Alzheimer's patient, but it wasn't like that at all. It was a different sort of thing entirely.

"Oh, sure, the guy gave me all these big, technical names for it, but all I really remember is him explaining that the machine had caused the same sort of damage to the first batch of Pokemon they'd tested that machine on. The called them "Shadow Pokemon". The effect of the brain damage, he said it was like someone had shut the door to their hearts. Destroyed their ability to empathize, or even feel positive emotion in some cases. Completely closed off their brain energy, their Aura. Pokemon, he said, could be cured in one sense or another. Their Aura or whatever would eventually break free, if it was nurtured enough, just like a happiness evolution, you know?

But humans, he said, didn't have enough of the stuff to matter, and Holly's was lower even than most. Showed it to me, right then and there, with him all stretched out in nothing but a paper gown. Waved this little device around, like he was checking for radiation or sumfin. Holly wouldn't even register on the meter. His Aura was completely dead."

"I didn't really think much of it, at first. I thought, hell, as long as he wakes up, I'm good wiff it." Roxie said in a rush, covering her mouth with one hand. "But when he finally did wake up, it became a lot more obvious just how dramatic of a change we were talking about.

"He drove everyone that came to see him away. Everyone from the lab, even the girl he was seeing, which at first didn't bother me a bit, coz I was thinkin', yanno, fuck this bitch, where has she been? Why wasn't she here from the jump? Why's she just coming around now if she knew Holly was hurt, and I've been here the whole time? But then when he was finished with her, he bloody turned on me! I stuck wiff it for a while, and Arceus knows I tried to take it all in stride but in the end, I made up my mind to leave him one day after we'd had it out over how I was _...just a stupid cunt who couldn't figure out what she wanted in life, because I was too afraid of getting her feelings hurt._ And this was after he'd told me that he figured it best if I just _...drugged myself to death, since I obviously couldn't handle the terrible privilege being rich and famous and having everything I wanted,_ mind you, so naturally, I told him just what I thought of him, which turned out to be a lot more vicious than I realized, so you can imagine that things ended pretty ugly between us.

"I left feeling so sick of him and myself that I decided not to even call Doc, in the end, too. I felt pretty guilty for that, but it's probably for the best. Hell, I don't think Doc even knows about the accident. Not that it matters. I mean, can you imagine that? Living the rest of your life, never connecting with anybody? Never being able to enjoy friendship, or camaraderie or-or love, even? Shit, Ash, Holly is alone. Dead alone! I mean, fuck, I feel bad for him, because he can't help it you know, but..." She reached out, as though trying to grasp something intangible, but then gave up, surrendering to the incomprehensibility of it all. "Honestly, I was actually a bit surprised he even answered my text."

Ash blinked. "Why'd you even text him if things were so messed up between you?"

Roxie rolled her head around. "Oh, I dunno. Things with the band have been getting me down lately and I was hoping that maybe I'd get the chance to clear the air with him. Didn't take too long after I sat down at the table tonight for me to realize that he wasn't looking for any apology, and he certainly wasn't gonna give one." She turned and kicked a bit of rubbish into the street. "Fuckin' cunt."

"So what now, then?" Ash asked, not sure really.

Roxie threaded a hand through her tangled hair. "I dunno luv. I really don't. I mean, full disclosure, he did ask me to help him get you loaded, but I hardly call that a rekindled friendship."

Ash, feeling like there was some element of betrayal here that he was far too drunk to pick up on, only shook his head. He'd figured there was some sort of agreement there, and it didn't seem like Holiday was just going to let him have an enjoyable night for enjoyment's own sake, but a motive was just too far out of reach, so he remained silent.

"It seems like he's mellowed out some since I saw him last, so, maybe Doc will stick with him, so long as long as things don't go south from here. Doc seems like he can handle the abuse, at least. Maybe it's a guy thing, but it just isn't my scene. It's too hard to care about somebody who doesn't give a shit about me anymore."

Much to Ash's distress, Roxie lost it there, coughing out a sob, and holding a trembling hand over her face. "I-I look at him, and I see all the good times we had, and then I realize that it's never going to be the same. It's j-just like fuckin' Billy, mate. I just can't take it! I cant!" She sniffed. "Does that make me a bad person?"

He shook his head no, but he had to ask. "Billy?"

Roxie closed her eyes, shunting a few tears down her face, which she backhanded away, smearing mascara and eyeliner. She grew quiet, as they went on. She began with what was barely more than a whisper. "Honestly, Billy, where to even begin? She was my best friend from the time I was six years old. She and I shared everything: secrets, makeup, boys, everything. We were inseparable.

"When I started the band in my dad's garage, she was there, picking away at that guitar like she was having the time of her life even though neither of us knew what the fuck we were doing. When I got picked to run the Virbank Gym, Billy helped me turn the place into a real rock venue, instead of just a bullshit basement-gymnasium. When the band took off, and I stepped away from the Gym to play music as a full-time gig, she was right there with me, no question's asked.

Roxie coughed, but then her face became hard. This was an old wound, and it had callused a bit with age. "Those were the best times of my life, and I wouldn't change them for anything. But I know that coming out to her was a mistake. Or at least if I had, I never should have told her I had feelings for her. I mean, fuck me, she had to of known I wasn't playing for her team anymore. It wasn't like I was hiding it very well. I'd just turned seventeen, and I was only just starting to figure out that I was gay in the first place, and I was a fucking rock-star! I didn't think I needed to disguise myself, surely to Arceus not from my best friend.

"But there I was, red-faced and stuttering while she just looked at me like I was a fucking lunatic. I kept telling and telling and telling about how I felt and what I wished, and all she would do was nod. She wouldn't say a goddamn word, so I didn't know what to think until she stood up, and walked away.

"She locked herself in her dressing room, and I got the shit kicked out of me by venue security, trying to get her to come out and talk to me. This show was in Khalos, of course, so they couldn't understand a wit of what we were saying. Naturally, things got out of hand, one thing led to another, and sure enough, they're taking me out in handcuffs. Nikki picked me up from the police station a little bit after that. _She's gone_, he says."

"_Well, what do you mean, gone?_ I asked him, and he tells me she took a cab to the airport and bailed. Went home, went somewhere."

"Did you go after her?"

Roxie let out a plaintive sound. "Yeah, course I did. Like a fuckin' moron. Gave me the same treatment there as in Khalos. Ignored my calls, locked herself inside, refused to even acknowledge me, and she hasn't so much as spoken to me or about me to anyone that I know of, to this day. To her, evidently, I fell off the map the second I told her who I really was."

"That's the part that eats me up the most, really. If she'd just said _fuck off, dyke_, I feel like I could have handled it. As it stands, I don't even know what the hell to think. Was it me who came on too strong? Did I fuck it up? Did I ruin everything, or is she the god-awful friend who wrecked it all? I don't know, and that makes it bloody hard to get right with what she did. It's like this fucking land-mine buried in my heart. I can't just forget my entire friendship with Billy, but I can't just omit the part where she tore my guts out, either, and every time I look back on it I feel terrible and I don't know whether to hate myself, or hate her. Same shit with fuckin' Holly too, mate. He's just stuck there," she thumbed her chest. "And there's nothing I can do about it."

"Fuck," Roxie said, rubbing her face. "I mean, what would you do If you were me?"

Ash thought about it. even though the words were already on their way out of his mouth "I'd leave," he said, simply, knowing that was the truth. That was what he always did. That was him, as a person. He was a rambler. Maybe he didn't have the same experiences she did, and he generally tried not to leave heartbreak and disaster in his wake, but it would've served either way. He'd left friends behind, and that was close enough for him to say he knew what he was talking about. It got much easier to put someone out of mind if you didn't stay where there were things that reminded you of them.

"How much further do you think I should go, then? I've been all over the world, mate! A million miles isn't far enough?"

Ash shook his head, feeling like he hadn't gotten his point across. "That's not what I mean-"

Roxie rubbed her eyes "Hell, I don't know why I'm askin' you anyways. You don't need to hear this shit. Just learn from the mistakes of one shitty adult, alright? Never try to make friends into lovers, because you'll ruin your chances at both, and never show your friends where they can hurt you most, because you never know when they'll turn on you."

Ash felt the continued need to object, but then his gear buzzed. He thumbed it up out of his pocket and then frowned, deciding to ignore it. Sabrina again. He opened his mouth to speak, but Roxie was already talking. "Now I've gone and cried meself sober."

"You do look awful." Ash remarked, brain to mouth filter vacant, and rendered easy to distract.

She pinched his cheek. "Right sweetheart you are." With a quick huff of air, she pointed her thumb over her shoulder, toward a street-corner gas station. "I need to pop off to the loo and freshen up."

Ash stared back. "So, go."

"Wot, and leave you out here, stumbling and slobbering all over yourself? You're so arseholed you can't even blink right. Jennies will pick your ass up in no time."

He tried, just to prove her wrong, but then realized that his left eye had closed notably later than the right. "Hold on, wait."

"Come off it, then!" She snatched him by his hand, and brooking no further argument, began dragging him toward the parking-lot toward the poorly maintained exterior door to the ladies bathroom. With a quick glance, Roxie peeked in, and then pulled him inside, against his feeble resistance and dire protests.

"I can't-I don't-stop pulling-what are you-I shouldn't-get off of-cut it out!" Ash hollered, even as he was being jammed into the ladies restroom, but Roxie mostly ignored him, tucking him beside the sink while she retreated into a stall.

"This isn't right," Ash noted, careful not to touch anything. Bathrooms were gross enough, but a girls bathroom was twice as septic, just by definition.

"Oi, you're making this weirder than it ought to be." Roxie soothed, fishing around in the lip of her boot, balanced awkwardly with one foot on the rim of the john.

"You're the one who dragged me in here!"

"Yeah, I did. For your own bloody good as well." She snaked her finger under a seam and ripped it free, plucking the thin, card-stock sheet out from inside between two fingers. The last blotter sheet she'd painted. She gasped in sweet thankful relief, smiling at the little purple Koffing she'd doodled on each one in water-soluble marker.

Ash hissed some continued protest as she carefully separated two of the little Koffing from their friends, and stuck out her tongue. It was going to take a big dose to even out this mood and get back to where she needed to be. Both of them stopped dead, however when someone began pounding on the bathroom door.

Ash sounded like he'd swallowed his tongue. He couldn't even enunciate his fear, and she nearly dropped the precious tabs on the floor, before regaining her composure. Thinking quickly, she unlatched the door, snatched Ash, and jerked him into the tight confines. She shoved him into a seated position on top of the toilet tank, while she scrambled into a precarious leaning position, both feet up on the rim now, and her back pressed against the side wall of the stall, as she maneuvered the door back into place. She cursed under her breath. She motioned to Ash, one finger pressed to lips as the door flew open, and someone barged in.

"Butch! What the hell are you doing? That's the lady's restroom, you know that right?" someone standing outside the door said.

"Don't care," the voice within, obviously male responded. "Gotta piss bad. Men's room was locked. Shit, shit, shit."

There was the soft tap-tap-tap sound of someone shifting their weight from one tiptoe to another as the man approached the stall door, and tried the handle. Ash held his breath, as Roxie barely got the latch slid silently into it's catch in the nick of time. With a snarl, whoever Butch was, sidled over to the much smaller stall next door, and noisily did his business, while the two of them perched there strangely were forced to listen to the voluminous evacuation of his bladder.

It went on so long that Ash felt himself wanting to laugh, and he almost through he would, uncontrollably when Butch started pissing again after a long moment of silence, but it was when Butch lifted one leg slightly and loudly broke wind just before zipping his pants back up that drove him over the edge. Luckily, Roxie was there to slap a hand firmly over his mouth.

"You're disgusting," the voice outside commented. "Now come on. We've gotta get over to that tower before those two goons do."

"Alright, Alright. Keep your pants on."

When the guy left, Roxie reclined her head with a thump against the railing, and disentangled herself from Ash, who of course, burst into giggles. At least, until he sniffed the air.

Roxie laughed. "What, can you smell it?"

"Ugh."

"Really? I don't smell a thing." Roxie asked, eyes shut, but smirk evident as she let herself relax again.

Ash batted the air, until he felt something weird on his face. He pulled the tiny scrap of blotter off of his cheek, transplanted there by Roxy's desperate efforts to shush him. "What is this some sort of breath-strip or something?"

Roxie's eyes flew open and she reached for him, but it was already too late. He jammed the paper sheets into his mouth, without a moment of caution. "Y-yeah." she managed.

"That's good. I got major booze-breath." He paused, tongue whirling about in careful consideration "What is this? Spearmint flavor? Tastes funny."

"Wood Pulp and Old Leather, actually," Roxie clarified facetiously.

"That's a funny flavor for a breath-strip." Ash remarked, oblivious as all hell.

"I..." Roxie began, but then sighed. "Oh, bugger me." She tore off a segment of her own, this time three individual tabs, and popped it back with the same fervency he had.

This was gonna be a long night.

* * *

"_Bro_." Holiday gasped, cradling a stitch. His stride slowed gradually, but eventually he was stopping to crawl across the pavement. "I'm not gonna make it. Just-"

Doc turned, and started pulling his partner's shoulder. "No, shut up. No monologuing."

"Bro, I'm done for," the taller admin admitted. "Save yourself."

Doc harrumphed. "You know they're gonna catch us if you keep fucking around."

"Tell your sister," Holiday groaned, "I loved...her..."

"Are you done?"

Holiday woke up, eyes fluttering, grasping madly for Doc's shirt."..._her box_!" Then, with a long, corny death-rattle, he pretended to expire.

Doc sighed, arms akimbo.

Holiday cracked an eye after a moment. "But seriously, bro. I can't run anymore. Fix this."

"Let's ride on my Rhyhorn."

Holiday nearly lunged up, but then relaxed, evidently not so pleased. "That sounds real gay when you say it like that. Can you maybe say it less gay? You're freakin' me out, Bro."

"Okay, um, Let's ride-?"

Holiday winced. "See, I dunno if I like that word."

"Let's jaunt...?"

"Oh, that's way worse."

"Let's take an excursion."

Holiday's look turned a bit apprehensive, but more or less accepting.

"...On?"

"No."

"Astride?..."

"Absolutely not."

"Situated atop."

His face grudging, Holiday nodded tentative accord.

"...My."

"Too possessive."

"This?..."

"A little non-specific. I don't want people getting the idea I do this all the time."

"THE RHYHORN, are you happy?!"

"I dunno about happy, but I'm definitely not feeling as vulnerable about this." Conducting in a singsong voice, Holiday prompted his partner; "Altogether now!"

Doc rubbed the bridge of his nose. "_Let's take an excursion, situated atop the Rhyhorn._"

"Sure bro. Sounds pretty baller."

Doc cast out the poke ball, to release the massive ground-rock Pokemon, but realized something was wrong when Holiday pushed shoulder to shoulder with him on the approach to their means of expedited escape.

Oddly, it was Holiday who questioned his closeness, not the other way around. "What are you doing, bro?"

"Trying to get up on Rhyhorn's shoulders."

"Oh. Well, I mean, It's gonna be pretty cramped up there with both of us."

Doc gave him a look, but Holiday snorted. "Bro, I can't ride bitch situated atop another man's Rhyhorn."

The stare continued for quite a while, even as they heard clattering behind them in the alleyway.

"Fine, fuck! Just get on-

"-Eh-"

"-SITUATED ATOP-the fucking Rhyhorn, before we get jumped!"

Holiday slipped a bit on his way up, but eventually worked himself into a more suitable position in front of the plated ridge on Rhyhorn's back, legs tucked behind the bony crest of it's head, while Doc took up a position more to the rear. Holiday, obviously certain that he was the driver, placed both gloved hands on the ridges of Rhyhorns skull, but then recoiled. He dug around in his coat, producing the set of mirrored safety glasses he'd confiscated from Realgam. He laid them over his face with a smug look, lips puckered, and irritatingly snapped a selfie with his transceiver, even as their pursuers began to turn the corner.

"Chillin...with...my...boy. Finna...ride... his...big...ol'...Rhyhorn. Semicolon, close parentheses." Holiday muttered, rapidly posting it to his Chatot social network page, winking smiley and all.

"Coz that's not gay at all." Doc sighed, and before Holiday could drunkenly argue further he gave Rhyhorn a solid nudge, and whoop, setting the brute of a Pokemon into a charge that sent them thundering straight toward their pursuers, who all scrambled back in the direction they'd come.

The duo whooped as they crashed through their pursuers turned quarry like a bowling ball striking ten-pins. Holiday, under the mistaken assumption that you could steer a Rhyhorn, tried to swivel the massive rock-ground type by his handhold on the crest of it's huge skull. Doc laughed when Rhyhorn kept right on surging forward, no more turned aside by his partner's urging than he'd been been by the four muscular bouncers who'd stood in their way just a few moments previous.

"Welp." Holiday said. "I'm out of ideas. Pretty sure we're gonna die." Holiday remarked matter-of-factly as Rhyhorn barreled out into the street, narrowly missing oncoming traffic, and hurtling straight towards a row of cars parallel parked on the opposite side of the road.

Doc produced the poke ball again, and slapped it firmly, button side down against Rhyhorns back. Doc fell just a few feet, skidding on the soles of his shoes as he slid to a halt on the pavement. Holiday, however, flew forward with the continued momentum, as the bestial Pokemon beneath him vanished in a flash of red light, slamming into the car in question at roughly waist-level. In a dazzling display of drunken savantism he slid headfirst across the roof and tumbled expertly to his face on the sidewalk opposite.

The fall seemed to sober him some, for when he emerged into visibility again overtop the car hood, one side of his face heavily abraded, safety glasses busted and dangling from his opposite ear, his previous humor had evaporated. "See, this is why I don't like it when you drink," he said with a frown.

Doc only rolled his eyes, glancing back toward the alley where they'd bowled over their pursuers. None of them appeared to be in as good of shape as Holiday, who, like many intoxicated individuals in car-accidents, had avoided any serious injury by failing to tense up. None of them had succeeded in standing up as of yet, and all of them ran the gamut of unconsciousness from flat-out to fumbling delirium. The admin pointed a thumb down toward the end of the street. "We should bail."

Holiday sneered at him, but followed at a modest pace.

"You wanna try and meet up with Ash and Roxie again?" Doc wondered, as they slipped out of sight, and hopefully, well out of mind.

Holiday shook his head, pulling the broken glasses off his face with a hiss, and throwing them in the gutter. "Prolly oughta to follow up with that thing we started on earlier."

With a shrug, Doc allowed Holiday to take the lead. "So what exactly is it that we're following up on?"

Holiday sighed. "What were looking for is a destructive interference emitter designed to attenuate to brainwave function in the hyper-gamma frequency range, between one and three hundred hertz, and emit an inverted wave-format in an identical bandwidth, negating it entirely. Think of it like noise-canceling headphones, but for high-functioning brain waves instead of sound."

"How do you do something like that? And why?"

"I was told that it was supposed to disrupt psychic Pokemon, although I don't see why you'd really need one as big as the one I built, unless you were dealing with something much more powerful than that. This thing is pretty massive."

"How big are we talking here?"

"Room-sized."

"Why so big?"

"Well, part of it is a question of the geometry involved, but a big part of it is also the mechanics of the device. The emitter effect is attained through a one of a kind Pokemon storage system linked to the device called a Pokemon Bank. Unlike the traditional Pokemon storage system, which allocates Pokemon storage units to each individual user and Pokemon stored, and archives all that data as individual packets, the Bank system stores data within a cloud array.

"The information for each individual Pokemon is not stored separately, but together in one great big heap, where it can be called out by identification bits attached to the data itself. When it's in the Bank, it's all together in a single data-cache of Pokemon information. This method requires more physical space because of entropy issues associated with storing incongruous information in a single physical directory, but the trade-off is that the cumulative data can be used in ways that the data stored in a traditional packet-directory storage system cannot."

Doc nodded, but it was in a way that made it clear to Holiday that he was beginning to lose the common thread of understanding. Holiday decided it was time to reel him back in.

"The important thing to note here, is that in the case of this particular system, all of the data stored in the main directory is Ghost type, and thereupon is the energy drawn to power the emitter itself. That's the beauty of it: Once the emitter is attenuated to the desired frequency, signal cancellation takes care of itself due to the dichotomous nature of Psychic and Ghost type energy spectra."

"Who made it?"

"I did. Part of my severance agreement."

Doc gave him a bizarre look, but Holiday only shrugged. "I told you there was more to it. Anyways, all I know is that foreclosure on the Pokemon Tower gave them all of the raw materials they needed, and the broadcast center gave them the perfect cover-up for a low-band emitter.

Doc nodded appreciatively. "What better place to catch and store Ghost Pokemon than right over-top a thousand year old Pokemon graveyard?"

"Yup."

"So why do we want this thing?" Doc asked curiously.

Holiday let out a plaintive sound. "Boss wants some of the proprietary components. Apparently he's pretty interested in the sort of technology that can block out Psychic energy was well. It's got to do with some stuff he thinks is happening back at Realgam. Long story. Anyways, technically they belong to me, anyways, since I built them. Only problem is they were financed by a Silph Co. holdings conglomerate, so I doubt they're just gonna let us waltz in there and take them."

"Why doesn't he just have you build a new one?"

Holiday scoffed. "Well, because then there wouldn't be any point in having you around, jackass."

Doc frowned in a plaintive way, brow arching high.

Holiday conceded. "The entire system is custom. It would take months to rebuild it, and I'm already busy with this other project."

"Oh, you mean the Pokerus thing?" Doc asked, knowing he hated hearing it called that.

As expected, Holiday narrowed his eyes. "Boss wants us to take this thing to a Silph Co warehousing depot tonight, and from there it goes straight back to Realgam."

"You said it was as big as a room. How are we supposed to get it out of there?"

"We just need the Pokemon Bank itself. It's solid-state, but there are internal power-cells should be able to keep the cloud data stable long enough to survive the trip. Any layman electrician can set up the signal emitter."

"Still sounds pretty substantial."

Holiday, lips down-turned appreciatively, bobbed his head. "Well..."

"I mean, how heavy are we talking? If we gotta make a hasty escape, I wanna know how much I'm gonna be humping outta this place."

"Eh. Prolly weighs about as much as a car."

"A car?!"

"A _small_ car."

* * *

Lavander Town was a small, quaint hamlet had been the site of a fortress once, in the days of antiquity. It's motte-and-bailey earthworks which were still partially visible today had then been surrounded by chevaux de frise, and towering walls of pine and oak that lived on today only as the names of old municipal roads.

Far older than the nearby city of Saffron that had since swallowed it up with the suburbanite infill of outdoor shopping malls, chain restaurants and gated retirement communities, Lavender had been the heart of the war effort against the Johto Rebellion in classical times. This had been the site of the last massive battle before the war had been quietly laid to rest by both sides, and the remains of untold thousands of soldiers, Imperial and Rebel, human and Pokemon, had been interned in the shadow of Pokemon Tower so high on it's foggy hill.

That old tower had been bulldozed over just a few years ago, it's somber stones replaced by the modern glass and steel edifice that was the Kanto Radio Tower, but all those graves remained, and it seemed that both Lavender Town and it's people could feel that. The tower twinkled and gleamed pridefully above all the low, squat structures of brick and mortar and thousand year-old timbers that waited with quiet apprehension at it's avarice.

Unlike the big-city investors that had elbowed their way into town, the people of Lavender understood well that the dead did not sleep forever, and they too held their grudges. For that reason, Lavender was a lagoon of silence in the surrounding bustle of a City that never stopped moving. Windows were darkened, and not even the wild Pokemon seemed like they dared move in the stillness of a night that hung much more heavily here than elsewhere in the region.

Two figures walked alone in the streets, either brave or stupid, their long and unpracticed strides failing to match one another as they cast about in the shadows, snickering between themselves. They'd stopped at an all-night pantry to procure much needed food and refreshment, and each walked with a smile and a blush of intoxicated glee that no sinister ambiance could diminish.

Ash held a cookie cream sandwich in each hand, smiling unrepentantly through a mouth full of oatmeal. "This is great!" he said, assuring his companion for the fifth time that this was the best thing he could remember. "I've never felt anything that felt so great!"

Roxie held a jelly doughnut with somewhat less reverence than he did, though her eyes did seem to light up a bit as sticky red jelly poured out over her thumb from a gaping bite-wound she'd left in the pastry's flaky exterior, for in that globule of fruit-gel clinging to her finger was all the deeply enjoyable things that life had to offer. Perhaps it was just that she was a bit more used to seeing things this way.

Ash however, was completely off the fucking deep end.

"I mean, really?" he asked, emotional tears clinging to his dark eyelashes. "How did I not know how great this was?"

He looked up into the sky, much clearer here for lack of the major light-pollution that plagued Saffron city, and the bright blue band of cosmic light that the milky way left spattered across the sky. It was incredible in this moment, with him more able to soak it all in and wrap his mind around it than before, and at once it made him feel quite small and quite a bit more solid for recognizing that he was so small within the overriding context of it all.

Out there were untold billions of galaxies, with untold billions of stars and planets all separated from him by distances that he would never even begin to understand. The colossal gray monsters that lurked in the dark between stars and blotted out whole galaxies from view, by way of being huge in the way man thinks of gods, did strike him as a bit worrisome, he was willing to admit, but he imagined himself as too small to matter to them. Interstellar god-monsters must do as interstellar god-monsters must do, after all.

Life on this earth was a crap-shoot anyways! All the meaning they gave themselves was compartmentalized, and relegated only to themselves. To pretend it wasn't was just stupid and foolish, but damn it all, it felt so good to be alive and to know that it didn't matter that it didn't matter, because everything was just the way it was meant to be, however senseless and pointless it all was...

"...You know?" he asked his companion who was now mid-lick across the back of her thumb, and too busy giggling about how much better strawberries would be if they came in a spicy variety.

Roxie did eventually relent to his ongoing existential revelation though."You're a bit cheeky when you're high. Did you know that? You're like a Pokemon what's learned to talk."

Ash frowned, seeing as how maybe that could get annoying, but the speculation did prompt some discussion. "I know a Pokemon who can talk."

Roxie smirked. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, pretty sure." He stopped and stood stark still, as he thought about it. When he had finally seemed to come to an intersection upon the road of decision, he reached back to nudge Pikachu, still recumbent within his hood. "Hey buddy. Say that thing you always say!"

Pikachu groaned and tried to roll up a little more into the hood, not pleased at all by Ash's childish antics. He discharged a small electric shock, but it didn't even register to Ash.

"Oh, don't get all quiet now!" The young trainer scoffed, turning back to Roxie. "Normally I can't get him to shut up about truth and devastation and stuff, or how he's gonna come up with a plan to catch Pika...chu...wait, hold on, maybe I'm thinking of someone else."

Roxie chuckkled. "That reminds me of a tour story, actually."

Ash opened his eyes wide, to show that he was ready to hear it.

"So we're on our way out of this battlecruiser in Canalave right? It's been a long night and we're all completely fucking arse over tits. Anyway, we run into these two fans of ours what had been shouting up at us from the front row. I'm talking big, strapping Orran lasses, eh? You know the type. Dusky skin, dark eyes. That come-hither-so-i-can-suck-the-poison-out look. Really, really strong jaw-lines.

"Anyhow, Ollie is so fuckin' sideways he can't even tell what's going on, so when they ask us to cop a point-and-click, of course he's completely on, and before I can even get ahold of the ladyboy's mobile to snap it, these two welterweights slide their skirts up and I shit you not, both of these crooked birds had John Thomases that I was nearly afraid to be in the same room with. I mean the veins on these things were bigger than a few live specimens I'd seen before. They looked like they could choke a man to death with them, and not in the obvious way, either, I'm talking like a three-legged triangle-choke, here.

Now Nicky and I are nearly pissing ourselves with laughter, I snap the photograph, and Bob's your uncle, there's pictures of Ollie slaloming these two titanic cocks posted all over Chatot. And that's why they call him ski-slope Ollie."

Ash sometimes found it difficult to understand what Roxie was driving at, when she slipped into a very heavy vernacular. Fortunately, the included subtitles made it a bit easier. As such, Roxie found herself standing there while Ash's slid his eyes from side to side just below her face, mouth subtly moving as though he were reading something. Shortly though, he nodded in appreciation of her story. "That's funny, I guess, but what about what I said made you think of that?"

"I was thinking about how you were making yourself look like a enormous cock. Then I thought about enormous cocks. Seemed the next logical step in my mind." Roxie replied with a snort.

Ash spat out half a cookie to keep from choking to death as he started laughing, but then he got sucked into the fractal macrocosm of corn-syrup and vegetable shortening, and any thoughts he had about huge phallic objects must've faded away like effervescent smoke as he trudged along slowly, mouth agape at the incredible miracle he clasped in both firsts.

Roxie watched him for a while, just staring into the cream of his cookie cream sandwich. "Penny for your thoughts."

Ash smiled, and took another bite, this one slower and somewhat casual compared to the more hoovering motions he'd relied on before. "Two girls kissing is awesome."

It was her turn to laugh, and she nudged the teenager playfully. "Ash, you're an alright sort, you know that?" The rocker sighed after a moment, though. "You're right. Two girls kissing is pretty awesome, but it's not all about the poontang, yanno. Even a rock-star like me starts to need a little romance in her life, after a while. Proper romance, I mean."

Ash tutted, not really focusing his gaze on her, so much as unconvincingly tearing it away from his cream sandwiches. "So what's stopping you? Sabrina seems to like you alright."

Roxie blinked. "...Really? Because I didn't get that impression at all." In spite of her professed skepticism, she was nearly halfway through punching out _**oi fuck u holly gaydar was rite**_! on her gear before Ash answered.

"Her exact words to me were that she knew exactly what you wanted, and that she would do anything she had to, in order to make this work between you," Ash responded with a shrug.

"Really? Really really?"

"More or less, yeah," Ash assured, somewhat hastily. He was now no longer sure whether he was lying. It didn't feel like a lie in that sticky, duplicitous way that sometimes lies did, clinging to the roof of one's mouth and leaving behind a lingering aftertaste. He also didn't face an anxiety attack in the form of the mental booby-trap his mother had long ago implanted in his brain by way of enforced childhood lessons. She didn't stand before him in his minds eye with conscience in one hand and guilt in the other, favoring him with that I-taught-you-better look on her face.

At the same time, it wasn't precisely the truth, either. Sabrina had basically said all those things. The difference being, Sabrina's arrangement had been with him, not with Roxie. He looked at the Unovan for a while, trying to take inventory of the situation. He liked Roxie, though he was pretty certain he shouldn't have. She was probably the exact sort of person that every forewarning about hanging around with the wrong sort had been targeted toward. Still, she was an alright person. Maybe a little mixed up, but who wasn't? Maybe she'd made a few bad decisions but who hadn't?

"You know what? To hell with it." Roxie began, standing stiff and straight upright, suddenly. "I've made up me mind. Gonna go over there to that tower, and shut down that broadcast right now. See if I don't!"

Ash blinked. "Whoa, really-I mean, just like that?" He snapped his fingers.

"Why not? Who the hell you you think owns Toxic Records Radio LLC? I got a 68% stake in that tower, luv. If I say it shuts down, it shuts _down_."

* * *

**A/N:** This chapter was fun. I really got a kick out of it, and I hope you did too. The conclusion of this arc should be coming along in relatively short order. I hope everyone had a nice Holiday, and is looking forward to 2014!


End file.
